T he new year officially starts in January, but for me, and perhaps many of you, the internal calendar re-sets at the end of the summer, where the programming of the school year lingers on. As the torpor of August sweeps away, one senses that heavier action lies ahead. Footsteps quicken in the crisping air, the days get shorter, and a new urgency propels events.

Consider, for instance, all the damage and destruction that ISIS (or ISIL or IS) has been able to pull off in summer heat that averages 110 degrees in the daytime in that part of the world. Many Americans would have trouble hoisting a jumbo shrimp out of a cocktail cup in that kind of weather, let alone scrambling around a desert with 30 pounds of firearms and extra ammo. The US has once again lulled itself into a false sense of security that it can control a battle theater with air power alone. So, here at summer’s end, we’re congratulating ourselves for “saving” the Mosul dam with drones and air strikes, but you can be sure that the next move is up to ISIS, and it will be calculated to horrify.

The Mosul dam is rated “the most dangerous dam in the world” by the US Army Corps of Engineers. Its instability is legendary — it was built by Saddam Hussein on water-soluble gypsum and requires extraordinary routine “re-grouting” operations to hold it together. What happens if ISIS controls the few roads that allow cement trucks to get there? I guess we’ll find out in a month or so.

West of there, in North Africa, Libya is in the process of completely cracking up. Islamist militias hold the old capital, Tripoli, where they destroyed the main airport and blew up a major oil storage facility. A rump national government fled to Tobruk near the border with Egypt. In between, south of Benghazi, lie Libya’s oil fields, a nice potential prize for Islamic maniacs, if they can manage to keep them operating, which is saying a lot. The Libyan fields are managed by the European oil companies Total (France), Eni (Italy), and Repsol (Spain). Their technicians have been fleeing the scene lately. Under Gaddafi. Libya contributed 1.6 million barrels a day to world oil production. Lately, it was running around 600,000 b/d. Where will it go from here?

Ukraine and Russia stand in an uneasy stalemate at summer’s end. Ukraine would like to regain control over the far eastern provinces around Donetsk and Luhansk where a lot of heavy industry from the Soviet days still operates. The trouble is: Ukraine is broke. It can’t pay its army. It can barely fuel its planes and tanks. The country faces related challenges getting in its renowned grain harvest this year with no money and little fuel. And it will soon feel the cold fingers of a harsh winter around its throat, with poor prospects for receiving the Russian gas and oil it has always depended on. Russia’s Putin seems to have wanted little more than Ukraine’s cooperation in its Eurasian Custom’s Union. But the USA and its NATO allies stuck their beaks in and tried to prevent that from happening, shoving Humpty-Dumpty Ukraine off a wall. Now that historically sore beset country has busted up and it is not likely to be put back together. Its best chance for continued survival would be to revert to a dependent relationship with Russia — grain for gas and oil — but we are still working to prevent that, in what may be looked back on as the dumbest geopolitical ploy of the new century.

Israel is increasingly cast as the bad guy in the Middle East. The threat of annihilation has made its leadership a little meshuggah over the years, but when all is said and done a cessation of rocket fire into that country would go a long way to starting some kind of diplomatic dialogue where there can be none for now. A large body of world opinion holds that firing rockets into Israel is a legitimate expression of political grievance. The problem is that it exactly resembles warfare. In fact, the most sedulous apologists for it have not really tried to define it otherwise. The net result is that acts of war are met with war. In the meantime, Israel continues to dismantle the Hamas command-and-control infrastructure. There is no other way to stop the rockets except to agree to cease to exist, and that, as they say in Hollywood, is not an option.

The new World Made By Hand novel
!! Just Published !!

“Kunstler skewers everything from kitsch to greed, prejudice, bloodshed, and brainwashing in this wily, funny, rip-roaring, and profoundly provocative page- turner, leaving no doubt that the prescriptive yet devilishly satiric A World Made by Hand series will continue.” — Booklist

About James Howard Kunstler

James Howard Kunstler is the author of many books including (non-fiction) The Geography of Nowhere, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, Home from Nowhere, The Long Emergency, and Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology and the Fate of the Nation. His novels include World Made By Hand, The Witch of Hebron, Maggie Darling — A Modern Romance, The Halloween Ball, an Embarrassment of Riches, and many others. He has published three novellas with Water Street Press: Manhattan Gothic, A Christmas Orphan, and The Flight of Mehetabel.

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The President is vacationing at Martha’s Vineyard, so everything must be okay. Would that this dim-witted ‘Murica make other arrangements rather than await the unexpected consequences of resource depletion, ever-increasing income and wealth disparity and climate change converging in the next few decades. Oil seems to be the core, common factor (problem) in all the places you describe (excepting Israel/Gaza which has its own quirky historical paradigm).

The old Indian in Little Big Man had it right, “Today is a good day to die.”

I remember that movie, and I remember that Dustin Hoffman’s character as an old man lay down just before it started to rain. That woke him up and he stood up and walked away, cheerfully chatting with his younger companion, as it was no longer a good day to die. Man plans and God laughs. Thus the movie ended.

As for “a good day to die,” another developing disaster comes to mind, the Ebola epidemic in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. The latest Ebola news includes Sierra Leone and Liberia threatening to arrest anyone hiding Ebola patients, Liberians looting a hospital full of quarantined patients and carrying them and infected bedding away during a riot, and the WHO admitting they’ve undercounted the victims. It reminds me of another movie, “The Phantom of the Opera,” in which the Opera Ghost crashes a costume party as The Red Death. All that would make the analogy complete would be if the movie really did turn into “The Masque of the Red Death” after that scene.

One of the problems with continuously subtracting investment in the basics of survival infrastructure is that somewhere, something is going to break down and the cost of fixing it will be prohibitive. Basic healthcare and emergency services, for example.

And here’s the problem: Ebola is killing the people trying to treat it. Even when every precaution is taken. So, what does that mean for the rest of us?

The Guardian article about Gaza’s gas is a typical anti-Israel propaganda piece, which casts Israel as the aggressor by trying to give a motive for Israel’s campaign other than the country’s need to stop the rocket attacks by Hamas. However, if you read the article carefully, the conclusion is that Israel would like the Palestinians to develop the gas field in order for the gas revenues to go to the Palestinian people, rather than to Hamas terrorist activity. Israel has no need for Gazan gas. The Gaza Marine field has an estimated 1 TCF, which would only be enough to satisfy two years of Israel’s fuel needs for electricity generation. Israel’s Tamar field, which is currently producing gas, has an estimated 10 TCF, and the Leviathan field is estimated to have twice that amount. Israel currently generates about 2/3’s of its electricity from gas and 1/3 from coal, and it has the power plant capacity to double the coal usage, if it were necessary. In short, the country has plenty of gas for the next few decades. If Hamas were not in control of Gaza and Palestinian leadership decided to live at peace with Israel, they could enjoy gas export revenues.

Why does the media call the presidents latest ny visit “private” when it is most likely involving the 1% and raising “private” support and funds. There is nothing like thousands of miles of turbulant ocean and a cacoon of material wealth to make people feel unthreatened. The rest of the world including you and me can just sit around and wait for the next bomb or frustrated armed person go off on cnn. Can we really afford to blame mass media for the increasing terrorist threats. Are we just going to ignore something ominous because it is incovenient timing? It is time to prepare for winter folks and the cold winds of political unrest will be effecting you.

Thanks, JHK, for bothering to attempt breaking through the public’s pathological insistence on blocking out objective reality with utopian platitudes and feel-good, self congratulatory bromides. In the meanwhile I’m still calculating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Chill winds a plenty. Even your short list would compel consequences, one would think, in a sane world, yet the world continues spinning on its axis of evil. Still, that tipping point, or whatever that thing is that we all seem to be waiting for, “the big one” refuses to arrive.

The last tipping point was the Crash of 2008, but really happened there. Oh, 40 to 50 percent of people already over the age of 55 lost about that much of their phony retirement accounts, but nobody talks about that. So what? Bid deal. [sarcasm]

Nothing changed for the better. Evil just took center-stage and added “rigged, manipulated, centrally controlled, militarized” to “stage managed”. The “Powers That Be” even when caught flat-footed still caught the crash in mid-free- fall. And this is where we are today. Some would think this is where we have always been.

Even in Ferguson events were only allowed to deteriorate so far, just like back in the 1960s. The police officer waving around his fully automated AR-15 screaming “I will kill you” was quietly removed. End of story. The rest of us keep hoping things will seriously change — Armageddon, End of Times, a full on Systemic Collapse — but really, they never do.

One would think that you can only shit where you eat so much before the stench rises even too high, even for those doing most of the shitting. How much sewage does evil have to swim in, in this “sweet cesspool” they created, before even they cannot stand it?

Yet, Wall Street lumbers on. Today’s MSN headline: “Stocks advance on stimulus hopes”. I love that…..”hopes”. The headline essentially means: “Stocks advance on no data at all or for any apparent reason whatsoever.”

To wit, I offer a poem of mine:

Wall Street, Wall Street

Wall Street, Wall Street
That dirty whore beat
Where shysters, sharks and bankers reign
Wall Street, Wall Street
That dirty whore beat
Could not care less if you or I gain
Wall Street, Wall Street
That dirty whore beat
It’s all for them and none for all!!
Wall Street, Wall Street
That dirty whore beat
The game is rigged and it’s time to call
Oh, Wall Street, Wall Street
That dirty whore beat
Lay your portfolio on the table
Wall Street, Wall Street
That dirty whore beat
Keep your shirt, if you’re able

“The Mosul dam is rated “the most dangerous dam in the world” by the US Army Corps of Engineers.”

Thanks Jim, that was news to me, but it doesn’t surprise me.

From the Wikipedia article on the Mosul Dam:

“The report further outlined a worst-case scenario, in which a sudden collapse of the dam would flood Mosul under 65 feet (20 m) of water and Baghdad, a city of 7 million, to 15 feet (4.6 m), with an estimated death toll of 500,000.”

That’s about as affective a weapon to use against the government in Baghdad as any organization could ask for.

I’m really not one of the “starry-eyed”. And I’m certainly not overly-optimistic; but I follow the news in great detail, and I have yet to have heard of an incident in which IS has committed a suicide-bombing-type indiscriminate mass killing. The likes of which have become common in Iraq, Pakistan and elsewhere (please correct me if I’m wrong; been wrong before!).

Yes of course they commit hideous crimes against humanity, and I agree that they need to be hunted down and dispatched like mad dogs.

But they seem to have a different approach to their murderous deeds. They seem to favor specific targeted assassinations (albeit large at times) of a particular type of person at a particular time, and for a particular reason.

One of my points being, that it seems outside their MO to destroy the dam at this point to deliberately destroy entire cities full of all types of people. I think they would prefer to conquer, occupy, and then selectively assassinate as they’ve done in the past.

Good observations on US foreign policy today… If you can call what we have a ‘policy’. It seems that the main product of American actions both at home and abroad is sociopathic behavior. Here at home from Ferguson to Camden and all about the land, but mainly for export: Ukraine, and south to Iraq, Libya, Egypt – spanning the globe! The US cranks out criminal responses (based in fear and rage) in friend and foe alike. We inspire resentments that will never die – not in years, not in generations.

This is what we do as a people – we create sociopaths. This is why the Millennials , by and large, are declining to participate in the American Dream. They seem even unwilling to protest its most egregious manifestations, seeing the situation as mostly unworkable.

Greg,
“Unworkable” for us common shlubs, but immensely profitable for a very select few. Since those select few are running the joint, the machine will grind on until the lubrication and fuel is exhausted. A suicidal course? Probably.

(Your perspective of sociopath-creation is most intriguing, and may actually be ‘quantifiable’. Isn’t that another of our fine specialties these days? “Studying” things?)

It’s important to study things – at least for me. I may not always draw the right conclusions, but the process of thoughtful and thorough examination works to keep my perspective in shape. It helps that I have no academic discipline to adhere to; I’m not an expert in anything of consequence.

At times of great change, credentials – a vested interest in the current lore – can act as a ball and chain.

Careful. Remember sociopath cultures like the Gypsy or Black Hip Hop are that way mostly to outsiders. Thus they emphasize the in group/out group dynamic. This used to be taught in College, but it’s never used since they want to amalgamate us all in “one”. But it remains a key principle in understanding.

Dying cultures become sociopathic to their own. The Comanche went this way with young men beating up the old and taking their wives.

Greg, as a Millennial I can fully attest to that truth. I have no urge to buy a home any time in the near future, and the more I read the news and really pay attention, the less I even want to start a family one day.

I can only say that I wish more of my generation would put down their smartphones, stop taking selfies, and start waking up to what’s going on around us. Like many generations before, I’m hoping mine will be the one to create change…either that, or we’ll be unwillingly part of a future out of our control.

Also, the S&P has rallied to new highs. Clearly the markets like what they see. Meanwhile, I’m trying to find out who we’re at war with. Eurasia? Eastasia? westasia? the malabar front? Oceana?

Ken Kesey had a theory the Venusians were sucking the life out of the earth. In fact, half the people around you weren’t people at all but Venusians in disguise here to colonize, sow discord, create chaos and exploit humanity.

The international situation can’t keep the traders spooked long enough, so the fear premium from the U.S. bombing ISIS ended up being a dead cat bounce. Prices here are exactly where they were before we intervened again in Iraq. Ukraine vs. Russia isn’t making them flinch for long, either. Next, U.S. gasoline supplies are up while demand is weak in the U.S. and appears to be falling in Europe and China. As Guido Sarducci reminded his audiences during his Five-minute university routine, “supply and demand.” Demand destruction is still working even as domestic oil supply increases from fracking and we import a lot of tar sands bitumen from Canada. That won’t last more than a year or two, as the fracking bubble will pop and the Keystone XL pipeline will allow the price of domestic oil to rise as Canada exports oil to the rest of the world through Texas ports. Still, that can is still rolling down the road. The question is now “can be kicked again after it stops?” Time will tell.

JHK,
So… what are ya sayin’? That we should pull in the horns, dismantle a few expensive footholds (out of the approximate thousand we now occupy), tend to our own beeswax (instead of everyone else’s) and get busy downscaling while there’s still time?
Izzat what you’re sayin’? (I say it’s time to stop with all the arming, training, funding crap as well; let “folks” burn their own bridges for a change, eh? As our dear Rumsfeld pointed out, “Freedom’s messy”. Somebody tell McCain he’s fired as terror procurer too.)

As to this:
“Consider, for instance, all the damage and destruction that ISIS (or ISIL or IS) has been able to pull off in summer heat that averages 110 degrees in the daytime in that part of the world. Many Americans would have trouble hoisting a jumbo shrimp out of a cocktail cup in that kind of weather, let alone scrambling around a desert with 30 pounds of firearms and extra ammo.” –JHK

While that may be a humorous take on the ubiquitous, nicely air-conditioned “Barcalounger Warrior” wallowing of a goodly portion of the ill-informed American public, as you say, it’s to be seriously considered, because screwing with folks lives and property (even though said ‘property’ may be a slice of blasted wilderness), usually makes them develop a taste for screwing right back — and usually in unexpected and ‘creative’ ways. When blasted wilderness dwellers get creative, deadliness compounds quickly because toughness will tell.

Hey Jim,
I have just finished Naomi Klein’s book “The Shock Doctrine” Very well researched and written. One I highly recommend. One thing she talks about is the huge influx into Israel by Russian Jews, who fled Russia under Boris Yeltsin, and how this changed an area close to peace, into the chaotic area it is now.
This is something I did not know. Something I am surprised that you have not touched on.
As for the rockets fire being retaliated against, yes it is justified….assuming it is not a false flag operation…

In a recent audio post by Dmitry Orlov, he mentioned that many Russian Jews, having moved to Israel, are now returning to Russia where living standards are rising and the quality of life has much improved since the fall of the USSR. That suggests that the Zionist dream of homeland or refuge for an oppressed people is not really working out well. Maybe non-Zionists Jews have figured out that the dream of Jewish state has been coopted by the hegemonic lunatics in Washington. Israel is not a homeland but really just a foreign operating base (FOB) to insure that ME petroleum keeps flowing and will remain a war zone until the oil is gone. Tony Cartalucci has an interesting post on this.http://journal-neo.org/2014/08/08/beware-israel-the-eager-provocateur/

Same thing happened when this group migrated to America. They took over the Communist movement, bought up the Newspapers, and then Hollywood and the Film Industry. People like Walt Disney warned us but no one listened. They also acquired the Republican Party a few decades ago – the ones who had been Trotskyites. Belief don’t matter to them except as vehicles of ethnic interest.

What will Israel bomb when there is nothing left to bomb? They have destroyed Garza’s infrastructure–electric power, water and sewer system
They are destroying it’s industrial capacity. They show no signs of wanting to lift the blockade. Do they intend to let the survivors slowly starve to death or die from disease? And what destruction has been inflicted on Israel? Virtually none. Do they have a plan for when the bombing stops? Have they thought this far ahead or are they just venting their hatred of Arabs? One would suppose that at some point the civilized world will say enough. But then is there any such thing as civilized behavior anymore.

What does Hamas hope to gain? Since they are not inflicting anything like proportionate injury on Israel can it be for a victory of world opinion?
That seems to be a reasonable assumption as the under 30s in the US, the only supporter of Israel, hold Israel more to blame than Hamas. And Europe clearly .supports Hamas or perhaps more accurately the citizens of Gaza as less culpable. It seems to me that as Israel holds the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza prisoner it is responsible for Gaza’s well being. That is what I am questioning. Israel’s end game. To me it looks as if Israel is content to torment the Palestinians indefinitely with the hope they will disappear (into Jordan). .In any event we will soon see what the result of the relentless bomb campaign will be. Can Israel just walk away as the US did after its defeat in southeast Asia leaving a terribly ravaged landscape and population. We shall see. After all Israel likes to call its army the most moral of all so maybe the post war reconstruction will reflect that as the post WW2 US treatment of its enemies. But I don’t look for it.

Sorry but Europe does not support Hamas. The media luvvies do but read the comments in almost every paper bar the hard left guardianistas and the bulk of the comments say screw Hamas they’ve had enough chances.
Last week I was in Cardiff, there was a free gaza demo outside sainsburys urging people to boycott israeli stuff. A huge bunch of Welsh valley boys went into sainsburys and bought carrier bags full of israeli peppers. They came out and waved them in front ofthe Muslim protesters who started to get bolshie. So then the lads pelted them with the peppers with a few clear off back to whatever shithole you came from thrown in. The police, who are normally all over this like a rash stood on the opposite side of the street and did nothing. Some passers by applauded them.
An awful lot of people have tumbled to the fact that in almost every conflict in the world today Islam can be found on one or both sides and people are sick of it.

That would seem to be self evident. What can one expect of a 1.5 million people held prisoner in a small strip of land. Which leads me to suspect that Israel’s only goal is to occupy all the captured territories without any Arabs.

Edward, that small strip of land is half the size of greater london with a population density of less than that of Manchester. If Israel wanted to occupy it why did they completely pull out in 2005? Incidentally, without arabs? 1 million arab muslims live in Israel and quite happy they are too. But then you can discount that because it doesn’t fit your agenda…

As a Mexican, I think Latin America doesn’t buy their pretenses because our faint historical memory sees crystal-clear a pattern we suffered in our history: the white oppressor who comes uninvited, takes the best land and kills and shoves the native peoples into reservations.

They keep taking and taking and extending their land and the worst: they keep complaining the “savages” are unruly!

As a woolly mammoth, I don’t buy the pretense that the white colonization and oppression of black and brown people is particularly outrageous.

See your ancestors migrated over to the American landmass thousands of years ago, and hunted me and other megafauna to extinction. It was true genocide.

And even today Mexicans and Hispanics are still reproducing far above the replacement rate of 2.1. The population growth puts enormous stress on other animals and the environment. Amphibians, as a class, are going extinct. The main victims of the Amerindian invasion of the southwestern USA are the wild animals whose habitats and water sources are disappearing to accommodate the metastatic human population.

Do Latin Americans care about what they’re doing to the environment and other animals? As far as I can tell, only whites–and particularly white men–give a shit about the environment and animal welfare.

Our idiotic universities have reduced ethics to fetishizing the racial and sexual Other, leaving no room for considering the astonishingly evil things we do to tens of billions of innocent animals and our environment.

Its a very elegant prison with nice shopping centres that sell iphones cheaper than here in the UK. There are hundreds of private swimming pools, waterparks, universities, schools, medical facilities. It looks nothing like they show you on film. Still its nice to see the money ripped of from UK taxpayers funding their welfare lifestyle.

It would do you well to read extensively on its history and the current living conditions there to understand the situation better, as the whole thing is far more intricate than your dumbass simplification bias allows you to understand right now.

Bring forth some of that brilliant insight you showed in Too Much Magic. Regards.

Maybe, like me, he’s actually been there. I’ve been to Gaza, Israel and the West Bank. You see you can read all you like but people have this terrible habit of reading material that supports their bias. Actually visiting it would be a revelation for you.

Muslim fanatics are cutting off heads by the hundreds, maybe thousands. all thru N Iraq. That’s where the action is! Why aren’t you worried about that? The bombing will stop when the V2 rockets stop coming in. Did you see the front page of the WSJ sunday, photo of Hamas, dressed in black like the ISIS killers, executing 18 Gaza men accused of ‘disloyalty’? Just with a bullet to the back of the neck, not beheading. Yet.

A warning to Israel as to say, ‘this is what lies in store for you if you should ever be overrun’.

It seems to me that we were all safer when the various middle east countries were ruled by dictators. In Iraq, for example, Saddam killed anybody who created a disturbance. Terrorists were wiped out without mercy. He would not only kill your family, but probably everyone who lived on your block, just to be sure. Democracy doesn’t seem to work well in these countries, giving terrorists too much leeway to inflict themselves on the people. It’s hard on the population, of course, but it kept them mostly out of our hair. Just my humble opinion. Bring back Saddam, he didn’t have any WMD anyway, right, Cheney? So he wasn’t really a threat to us at all.

The irony is you cannot see that IS and Hamas rule by the same principle of terror as Saddam, Assad and Gaddafi. Saddam and Gaddafi were far more ruthless than IS or Hamas which is why they stayed in control for so long. All three sponsored terrorists worldwide a bit of basic research would tell you that.

I’d differ a bit on the air strikes thing. I think the US realizes that air strikes alone can’t stop ISIS, but use of ground troops would be politically unpopular, so the Obama is taking what limited actions are liable to have broad public acceptance.

One might argue “then why do polls show the public very disapproving of his foreign policy”. I think probably he gets a bum rap on this. Conservatives will blast him for not doing more and lefties will blast him for getting involved at all. If he pursued different foreign policy, either more aggressive or less, his poll ratings would probably just be even lower.

I agree, it doesn’t bode well for either Israelis or Palestinians. I wonder if the leaders of Israel realize that the Palestinians can not stop fighting. That it is human nature to seek freedom especially for young men who have lost family members.

As always, Jim a great piece but I have to disagree with you on that last point. There is much that Israel can do to stop the rocket attacks. It could stop the illegal occupation and settlement expansion within territory that was designated by the UN as belonging to the Palestinians. It could revert to the pre-1967 borders and give back land it has stollen. It could designate a contiguous land mass as a Palestinian state, instead of disconnected Bantustan-like pieces interrupted by walls and checkpoints, with no natural resources such as water. How do they expect the Palestinians to form a state that way and accept that offer? They could honor the democratically elected Palestinian leadership, instead of demonizing them as terrorists because the election did not go the way Israel wanted it to go. They could stop relentlessly saying that all Palestinians are terrorists and using that as an excuse to keep the citizens of Gaza in perpetual misery with sanctions. They could stop the propaganda that Palestinians use civilians as human shields and they could admit that this is nothing more than a war of attrition with a people they have no real interest in negotiating with. They could lift the sanctions. And lastly, please understand that the security of Israel, the most powerful state in the Mid East that also has nuclear weapons, is in no way at risk by rocket attacks that are as fire crackers when compared to the modern weaponry that it has used against Gaza. It is completely untrue to maintain, as you seem to be doing, that Israel’s only option to stop the attacks is to cease to exist. In fact, your statement on this matter is absurd and beyond the pale.

You are right, none of the Palestinian demands will be met by the current Israeli leadership. That can change or the circumstances can change. But, Palestine can not quit fighting, because the drive to escape prison to have freedom is universal.

Why should a progressive insist Israel HAS a right to exist, as a fascist ethnic nationalist state?
Marriage law in Israel–Arabs and Jews cannot.
Jews not in the mythical priesthood “Cohen” line cannot marry Cohens.
Arabs restricted vis a vis property rights, relegated to rent or own in certain areas only.
If the US had such laws, no one would dare call it a democracy.
The fact is Jews in the mass/mainstream have sold out to Zionism and thus tolerate this ethnic supremacism, little different than South African apartheid mysticism, itself based on Calvinism’s “Chosen” rather than Judaism’s “Chosen.”
Yes, there are plenty of Jewish dissenters, but they are removed from the power elite in the United States and many “progressive”
Jews will not go so far as to abandon entirely Zionist mysticism.
So they reluctantly must defer to Israel’s rabbinical law…the Orthodox version thereof, that is the most ethnic supremacist and retrograde.
Israel SHOULD be allowed to exist as a secular state with Palestinians allowed the full right of return–most will then call the nation Palestine, of course.

Well said. But when the Palestinians return and become the majority, what do you think they’re going to do to the Jews? Live and let live? Oh you of much faith! The Jews hold the Tiger by the Tail – they cannot let go. And yes, it was obvious utter hubris to create a Jewish state in the middle of Arab Lands. They were offered other places: Stalin offered them a nice part of Southeastern Siberia, twice as large as Israel. They were also offered several places in East Africa – including gigantic Madagascar.

I am a long time admirer, and have read all of your books. “The Long Emergency” is my favorite. I am an avid reader of this blog, and always enjoy it. However, like a few other commenter’s today, I am having trouble with your simplistic analysis of the Israel-Palestine issue. Hopefully the following three paragraphs from an article by James Petras, a Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York will help you understand why Hamas fires rockets.

“The practical decision to exterminate Palestinians was conscious, planned and pursued with implacable resolve at the very top and carried out with savage enthusiasm by Israel’s ‘citizen army’.

The unfolding of this deadly plan began with what appeared a ‘generous’ peace offer. In 2004, Israel’s war criminal Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon ‘granted’ the Palestinians self-government in Gaza and in August 2005 withdrew a few thousand Jewish settlers and their Israeli ground troops. The consequence of this benevolence: Over 1.4 million Palestinians were to be locked and crowded into the most densely open air prison in the world: the largest ghetto in history. This was a sickening reminder of the Nazi roundup of Polish Jews herding them into the Warsaw ghetto . . . where they too were granted ‘self-government’. Once the Jewish settlers were removed (and paid up to $300,000 per family ‘compensation’), Israel’s military closed all of Gaza’s entrances and exits. Land, sea and airspace were blockaded and total control imposed on the entrance of food, medicine, school books and the exit of Palestinians for medical treatment, university studies, normal travel and commerce of any kind. This mirrored the Nazi policy toward those trapped in the Warsaw ghetto. Palestinian farmers were shot tending their fields, acts of brutality reminiscent of the Nazi starvation blockade of Leningrad… And the world was appalled!
Gaza and the Ghetto were first set up to be open-air prison camps . . . temporary measures to mask the real plans. Gaza’s young population had grown to over 1.8 million entrapped human beings by 2014. Obviously, if the Gazans could not travel, farm, fish and trade by normal means, they would dig tunnels for supplies and fight against their relegation to the status of caged animals by the Israeli state. The next steps after the successful enclosure would be systematic and pre-meditated: the Zionists, like the Nazis, launched total war against the inevitable acts of resistance by the oppressed. They sent planes, tanks, missiles and bombs to level populated areas, especially neighborhoods where young fighters rose up to resist this unendurable cruelty. The heroic young fighters of Gaza, like their Warsaw predecessors, resisted their totalitarian enemies time and again. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Israeli Jews cheered the devastation while claiming to be the victims and young overseas Jews volunteered to join the IDF in its slaughter of the Palestinians, just as the German population celebrated, along with the overseas German Bund, their leaders’ totalitarian crimes. Their responses were almost identical although in different times and places: Chosen People and Arians of the world have united against what they both termed ‘terrorists’ claiming their tunnels will become their graves!”

Like South Africa before it, Israel is an apartheid state, and is rapidly becoming a pariah on the world stage.Unfortuneatly, the USA is an accomplice to Israel by providing it $3.1billion per year in military aid and weapons. Without this aid, Israel would just be another dysfunctional backwater in the Middle East.

Even if Hamas declared that Israel has a right to exist does anyone really thank that would change Israels plans for a unified Israel encompassing all the occupied territories? Of course not and Hamas should beat Israel at its own game and so declare. Doing this would remove all of Israels excuses for its subjugation
of the Palestinians.

I think what is most disturbing about the Israel-Palestine conflict is the disproportionate punishment being meted out by Israel on the Palestinians. Yes, I agree that Hamas should not be firing rockets into Israel. But they rarely ever hit anything or kill anyone. Unlike the bombs that have levelled large portions of Gaza, destroyed a good part of its infrastructure and killed many people. It’s kind of like saying if my neighbour throws a rock over my fence and hits my kid on the arm, then I have the right to completely destroy his house and his business and kill all the members of his family and anyone he associates with.

Except its not a rock, its a rocket with an explosive warhead. The Israelis have spent millions on shelters in schools, hospitals housing complexes, they are everywhere. Then they developed Iron Dome as well.
Let us assume for a moment Mexico start lobbing unguided missiles into the US, fires mortar rounds and builds tunnels to smuggle in people, not to work, but to kill as many US citizens as possible. You’d flatten them very quickly. Look what you did to Fallujah. More arabs men women and children died there than in the entire israeli/palestinian conflict. No protests though or complaints and heck they weren’t even attacking the US.

Well said, to say the least. But as to US aid, it’s worse than that. Israel is an extremely rich country, and it does not need any help from the US. It would in no way be a backwater if all aid were stopped. However, hawks in both parties cannot fathom that Israel is not as pure and righteous as the driven snow, an innocent nation under relentless attack by the forces of an evil, terroristic band of murdering thugs. In short, they buy into the propaganda that serves to keep American defense contractors selling munitions to the Israeli war machine, and keeps Americans stoked for “war against terrorism”. They refuse to have any truck with the absolute truths of which you have spoken. The cycle of violence will never end until enough people come to understand your way of thinking. With a well-financed propaganda machine in this country in the form of right wing media, and even within most of the left wing, that is not likely to happen any time soon. All people get is lies, misinformation, and myth. What a tragedy.

An interesting column by the American journalist on Truthdig this morning. Here is the last paragraph….

Israel’s Likud government has the doctrine of the Iron Wall, of hitting its enemies hard and consistently until they comply. It has failed to secure the acquiescence of Palestinians in their dispossession because being stateless is intolerable. Israel is put forward by Zionists (Jewish nationalists) as a solution to the statelessness of European Jews under the fascists during the 1930s and 1940s. But they have a blind spot when it comes to the statelessness of Palestinians, figuring that that does not need a solution. Until Israelis come to terms with the Catastrophe (Nakba) that they have inflicted on generations of Palestinians, who have been left more or less homeless and in a kind of vast concentration camp, they cannot really make peace. And each episode of the Iron Wall with its Iron Fist degrades Israel a little more. Perhaps it can survive being an international pariah. But Israelis will one day look in the mirror and not like what they see, one little bit.

Perhaps you should expand your research of the Israel-Hamas-Gaza conflict to include writers/historians/journalists who are not card-carrying ‘Zionist Conspiracy’ theorists and rabid anti-semites.

For starters, there was no Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza when Israel pulled out in 2005…see ‘Agreement On Movement and Access’ treaty signed by Israel and the PA in November 2005. The blockade began in 2007, after Hamas seized control of the strip (Battle of Gaza) and began launching rockets (supplied by Iran) into Israel.

Mr Patras and his Hamas comrades will crank out their sh*t till the cows come home, but most of us comprehend that repeating a lie over and over doesn’t make it true.

It’s the oldest trick in the book. As soon as anyone dares to criticize Israel’s atrocities they are labelled “Zionist Conspiracy theorists”, and “ant-semite”. Those of us who are open minded about the Israel/Palestine problem get tired of this anti-intellectual bullshit. I don’t have a dog in this fight. I’m a New Zealander. I’m impartial. I read all writers/historians/journalists on the subject.

Professor Petras (note the correct spelling of his name) never stated that the blockade started in 2005. You need to read his comments more carefully. Whenever it started, it is still illegal and disgusting. It’s another Berlin wall, and we all know how that worked out.

Yes, the rockets are supplied by Iran. If you have a problem with that, you should maybe consider that Israel’s array of tanks, bombs, airplanes, and nuclear missiles(!) were supplied by the great imperialist nation of the USA. As I said, to the tune of $3.1billion per year. Don’t you see the irony?

Speaking of “cranking out sh*t till the cows come home”, How about these Israeli whoppers…. “ They use their children as human shields”…..and “Hamas started it by killing three boys.”… and “ we give them warnings before we bomb them”…..and “The IDF is the most moral army in the World”.

As you said…. most of us comprehend that repeating a lie over and over doesn’t make it true.

As I said in my original post Israel is an apartheid state. Google “Israel and the Apartheid Analogy” and educate yourself on this subject.

The editorial of the Israel ‘family’ magazine Fountains of Salvation, calls for the placing of Palestinians in extermination camps, Unfortunately, this is something that can not be dismissed as the isolated call of a few nutcases?

Meanwhile, the killing of innocent women and children by the IDF continues.

The ‘Warsaw Ghetto’ comparison is disgusting. European Jews were not in the ‘obliteration’ business, as were the Germans, Poles and Arabs…as are Hamas Jihadists and their henchmen.

The blockade is neither ‘illegal nor disgusting’, though the unprovoked launching of rockets by terrorists into a sovereign country is both.

If Israel is an apartheid state, what are all those Israeli Arabs doing there, living as citizens, participating in the political and judicial processes of that country? Right… And how many Jews are citizens of Jordan…a 100% Arab country occupying 80% of the land that is historic Palestine? Zero. Not a single Jewish citizen living in Jordan. So, what were you saying again about apartheid?

Though ‘the wall’ has successfully deterred suicide bombers from blowing up innocent women and children, the launching of rockets and tunnel assaults by Hamas Jihadists continues.

Jim, there is no REPLY box to Javamtn’s rabid reply of August 26, 2014 at 12:31 pm…so I’m posting my reply here..thanks.

Javamtn,

Man, you can sure get worked up….guilty conscience maybe?

I’m very proud to be a New Zealander,…. and impartial. I hear myself very well. At least New Zealand isn’t imprisoning the native Maori race in a ghetto, and killing there women and children.

By the way Mr. Pretras is a Professor….not “my guy” as you crudely put it. Please address him with the respect he earned.

Please list the “lies and half-truths” Professor Petra’s has stated.

I’m sorry Javamtn, Israel Jews are in the “obliterations” business. What do you call 2,000+ dead, thousands of homes, businesses, hospitals, and schools destroyed, and thousands of people made homeless? Sounds like “obliteration” to me.

The blockade is “illegal and disgusting”. No person has the right to imprison another person.

I agree that there are Arabs living in Israel. This does not in any way mean that Israel is not an apartheid state. The Israel-Arabs, especially those participating in the political and judicial processes of Israel, are just as guilty in per suing apartheid policies.

Did you bother to Google “Israel and the Apartheid Analogy”? I suspect you did not. There you will read the opinions of many knowledgeable and respectable world leaders who postulate that indeed Israel is an apartheid state. Some even opinion that the apartheid is worse than what occurred in South Africa.

Like the Berlin wall, your “wall” will not stop “Hamas Jihadists and their henchmen”….Do you hear yourself? Suicide bombers, the launching of rockets, and tunnel assaults by the Palestinians will stop when Israel stops treating Palestinians as caged animals.

FYI, the Jews are, themselves, the ‘native’ indigenous people of historic Palestine (aka the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judea) since 1200 BCE…and despite their involuntary expulsion by the Romans, have managed to maintain a continuous Jewish presence in their homeland since that time.

Conversely, the Arabs aka ‘Palestinians’ are indigenous to the Arabian Peninsula…arriving in the region of historic Palestine via military conquest in the 7th century…more than 1500 years after the founding of Jerusalem by the Jews.

These Arabs may call themselves ‘Palestinians’ (aka a new-minted national identity invented by Yassar Arafat in the 1960’s), but they are NOT the native people of that region.

The Israelis are in the ‘survival business’, as Jews have been for centuries. When attacked, as they have been for the past 66 years, they fight back with whatever force is necessary to neutralize the threat to their existence. Given Israel’s military capability, the fact that Gaza hasn’t been ‘obliterated’ demonstrates Israel’s restraint.

Apparently, you (like many right-wing supporters of Islamic totalitarianism) have a problem with Jews defending themselves, which is why we rarely witness your outrage when Muslims kill Jews…or other Muslims (191,000+ killed in Syria, but no mass protests around the world for those babies!).

Hamas Jihadists will not stop until they have achieved the goal to which they are ultimately sworn: the extermination of the Jews and an Islamic State built upon the ruins of Israel. If you can’t acknowledge this fact, then you haven’t been paying attention.

And Jim, you should know that the “right to exist” canard is nothing more than semantics. Something the Palestinians say for internal consumption. To me, the real issue is not whether Israel has a “right to exist,” but whether it will be “able to exist” if they don’t find an alternative narrative…

I do not know if it is factual or a myth that the leadership asserts that. I do know that the leadership is guilty of much violence and repression, just as the Israeli leadership is. But I believe that the Palestinians would alter that stance, assuming that it is true, if Israel would negotiate fairly with them to return the land that was stolen. I think that would be a good place to start, and I do not believe that the Palestinians would assert that Israel does not have a right to exist, if that agreement were reached. Such an assertion at that point would make no logical sense, and although they may be a little nuts after all the injustice they have endured, they are not insane. I think they would accept peace. And certainly, world opinion would come down solidly in support of Israel if it were to act in good faith. Then, and only then, would the Palestinians have no just reason to claim Israel is acting as their enemy.

The West Bank and Gaza were not designated by the U.N. as belonging to the Palestinians. Those areas were designated by the U.N. as “unassigned territories,” meaning they were not part of Israel or Jordan, and that was when the area was partitioned into Israel for the Jews and Trans-Jordan for the Arabs. Neither territory was meant to be yet another Muslim country.

Jews used to live in Gaza (so did a lot of Christians) but they were forced out. Jews always lived in the West Bank. To demand that the unassigned territories be Jew-free is apartheid, is it not?

As for the rest of your incorrect comments, Hamas uses civilians as human shields and stores armaments in schools and mosques (even the lousy U.N. admitted it). Hamas rocket fire makes normal living impossible. If Hamas could manage to get more technologically advanced weaponry and kill lots more Jews, I bet that would make you happy.

The US and EU are bluffing Putin with a pair of deuces while Putin has a nut flush. If Ukraine fails to meet its obligations, much of Europe freezes starting on November 1. Russia is a country of only 140M population which benefits them because they could literally thumb their nose at the EU and US from the standpoint of energy independence. Whatever Russia cannot supply on its own, Iran will more than happily fill in.

The jingoistic swagger routine of the US and EU now resembles the quivering bravado of a scared clown.

“If they do, the West will freeze their banks completely out of the world monetary system.”-CancelMy.

Hmm, what exactly IS the “world monetary system” these days?

Let us be more precise. When we talk about the a monetary system of global scope, that is something different than the network of failed financial institutions overseen by the Federal Reserve.

If there is a “world monetary system” it is coordinated by the BIS headquartered in Switzerland, and they will hang ‘The Fed’ out to dry in a heartbeat, if it suits them.

Based on their guidance since December 2012, it looks like they are getting ready to do just that.

So, what does the US actually ‘produce’ at this point, beyond hypothecated Debt and an incredibly large volume of weaponry to stoke the world’s conflagrations? Let’s be honest with ourselves. Our primary exports are: Debt, Death & Destruction. We need the rest of the world in the worst way, and worse still, we need the rest of the world to believe that it needs the US.

US foreign policy is as fake as it’s financial institutions at this point. This is what comes of ‘ephemeralizing’ your economy.

The Russians – and by ‘Russians’ I mean Putin and his advisors – seem to understand this very well. Every action they’ve taken over the past seven years seems to be aimed at holding us off and letting us run out of air, while consolidating their assets and alliances.

Allow me to elaborate by telling a short story. Sometimes telling a story helps to illustrate a point.

Many years ago when I was at Ft. Benning attending Jump School, the lead instructor (we called him “Sergeant Psycho”) told us an inspirational story about succeeding through attrition:

There were two combat grunts separated from their unit, lost in a nameless tropical hellhole, out of ammo, evading capture and trying not to get eaten by wild animals.

They discover that they are being followed by a very large tiger, so they quicken pace.

The tiger starts to trot.

They start to climb a steep slope.

The tiger climbs.

Suddenly one of the grunts sits down, rips a pair of running shoes out of his rucksack and pulls them on.

The other grunt asks him: “what the hell are you doing?! You can’t outrun a tiger!”

The first grunt stands, checks the fit on his shoes and says: “I don’t have to outrun the tiger. I only have to outrun YOU”. And he takes off…

By analogy, Russia does not have to win an economic competition with US. It just has to do ‘less-bad’ than the US and the US will take care of itself.

Russia is a country of only 140M population which benefits them because they could literally thumb their nose at the EU and US from the standpoint of energy independence. Whatever Russia cannot supply on its own, Iran will more than happily fill in.

Russia is a rentier state — its cash flow depends on energy sales. Russia needs the rest of the world, especially The West, more than it needs Russia.

As an example, Iraq has the second largest oil reserves next to Saudi Arabia and one could argue, if the truth be told, considering Iraq is not allowed to ramp up production it may now have the world’s largest reserves. That hasn’t stopped all vested interests from neutering Iraq and keeping its oil production off line.

It could have been argued in 2003, and more than likely was, that an invasion of Iraq would destroy, or greatly impede, its ability to produce oil. But they invaded and occupied anyway and in so doing kept Iraq’s oil production off line.

Tin Pot dictators holding energy cards doesn’t work as black mail. Saddam is a prime example. Gaddafi’s Libya another example. In fact, if we use just those two as examples, we can see purposely limiting supply seems to be the goal, and if that’s the case, Putin better find something better than a spider hole to hide in if he’s not in on it.

“Tin Pot dictators holding energy cards doesn’t work as black mail. Saddam is a prime example. Gaddafi’s Libya another example. In fact, if we use just those two as examples, we can see purposely limiting supply seems to be the goal, and if that’s the case, Putin better find something better than a spider hole to hide in if he’s not in on it.”-ColdNHolefield.

This is an interesting ‘take’ on events… One that would sell very well in Neo-Conservative circles… And probably nowhere else.

Comparing Gaddafi and Saddam to Putin is simply not going to work. Neither of the former had a stockpile of ICBM’s, and good conventional military forces (with all that entails) on tap, for example.

Are you forgetting to take into account all of Russia’s *other* assets? And what about Putin’s successful line-of-sight transformation of the SCO into the BRICS-bloc?

Unlike the ‘leadership’ (as such) aligned around the aging US/UK axis, these are concrete deliverables, resultant from methodical and well-executed planning.

By the way, I’m under no illusions about Putin being a ‘nice guy’ etc., but I do know __competence__ when I see it.

You seem to be a rational person. I understand that we all have to make a living, but where are you going with this?

I have been dazzled with Jim’s writings on the car culture, architecture, misguided development of suburbia, economics, and the fossil fuel crisis for years. He has taught me so very much through his blog and podcasts, and his excellent books. I cannot imagine my life without the attitudes and enlightenment concerning American culture that he has brought me. And so for those many reasons it pains me all the more to see him taking this particular hard-line, neoconservative stance regarding the Israel-Palestine tragedy. I may be wrong, but I find it hard to accept that the Palestinians are as demonic as he maintains them to be. It’s just too simplistic, and naturally it’s what Israel’s hard liners want everyone to believe. That way they never have to deal with the Palestinians except to slowly strangle them in the name of self-defense.

Still, if your concern is the continuation of the Israeli state, those puny rockets are the least of your worries.

As a matter of fact, focusing on them (in the larger scheme of things) is… comical. It’s like a hunter camping at night and trying to shoot a nasty mosquito with his rifle, oblivious to the pack of wolves and bears now on his back, that he has drawn to him with all the ruckus.

“The Palestinians were simple peasants once, easy to lead, terrible fighters. Israel had lots of chances to deal with them, but they had a mandate—nothing worse than a mandate—and didn’t need to make a deal with anybody. Now it’s too late. There isn’t always a good solution at this point in the game. Maybe ten moves back you could’ve won, but not now.”

I believe some people, perhaps scholars and Arendt herself, have come to describe the ‘banality of evil’ as motivations stemming from unexceptional stupidity. I don’t see evidence to refute that… at least on these boards.

There is a real disconnect between how you regard Ukraine, where the rebels have shot down a passenger jet killing hundreds, and Gaza, where feckless rocket attacks have not even caused double-digit fatalities.

You have a keen eye for energy and financial issues, but your analysis of things like military affairs, gay rights, and race relations is about as edifying as listening to Yergin on peak oil.

“There is a real disconnect between how you regard Ukraine, where the rebels have shot down a passenger jet killing hundreds, and Gaza, where feckless rocket attacks have not even caused double-digit fatalities.”-DannyM.

The rebels did not shoot down MH17. A plane under the control of the regime currently holding power in Kiev did.

US investigators demonstrated that to the Malaysian government, and the Government of Malaysia is suing Kiev, not Moscow.

(Citing Singapore and Straits Times)

It’s very understandable that you were not aware of this. There’s been a media-blackout around these developments in the US and the UK…

I see that somebody else has called this, talking about “…Ukraine, where the rebels have shot down a passenger jet killing hundreds…”.

Is that right? According to what, according to whom?

That’s a meme that has been steadily force fed to people, although, it’s interesting to note, that has somewhat suddenly disappeared from the infotainment barrage that substitutes for working journalism for most Americans now. But that was firmly planted in the minds of many people, and now casually referred to by many people as if it’s established fact, one of the kinds of things some people will toss out with a preface that goes like “everybody knows…”, with the twist that it isn’t actually KNOWLEDGE.

That particular meme comes in the same package as “Russia invaded and seized Crimea”, also treated as if it’s established fact, when, in actual fact, you know, reality, that firmly planted meme is completely false, and there’s nothing even remotely subtle or uncertain about it.

It’s actually a good thing that this comes up, because the whole subject of recent and current events thousands of miles away in eastern Europe is just one element of a whole batch of different major dramas that are not only bad enough by themselves, with potential much bigger trouble, but made even worse by the complications of being obscured and obfuscated by sheer pure bullshit on a monumental scale.

“It’s actually a good thing that this comes up, because the whole subject of recent and current events thousands of miles away in eastern Europe is just one element of a whole batch of different major dramas that are not only bad enough by themselves, with potential much bigger trouble, but made even worse by the complications of being obscured and obfuscated by sheer pure bullshit on a monumental scale”. — JL Eagan

Yessir! Sure does point out the dangers of mendacious think-tankery and their lick-spittle coterie of paid trollops, now doesn’t it?
Thanks for bringing out the branding irons, they’ll come in handy…
“Got Rope?” – New think-tank ad campaign

Basically, had the Brits told France “up yours” and given the Arabs what they wanted for helping fight the Ottomans, we’d have a different Middle East. Instead, they promised the Arabs independence and Syria in 1915-17 but sold them out in 1918. We ended up with a mess.

Probably we’d still have a mess there had the Brits honored their agreements, but the Wahabists would have not been on the throne in Arabia after 1923. Faisal’s moderates, not ibn Saud, would have run the show.

Lawrence was disgusted by the sell-out of the Arabs. Believe it or not, Faisal and his family, along with the Syrian Arabs, wanted a US protectorate because they felt we were neutral arbiters and would not colonize their lands. Oops. But it was a different time and a century of stupid decisions by all parties have made it worse.

Now terror is indeed coming to London and Paris, the ghosts of the Sykes-Picot Agreement rattling their chains and strapping on their suicide vests.

While your continuing commentary on going-on’s in the Eastern Hemisphere are entertaining and insightful, they are typical of the MSM’s tendency to “busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels,” as Henry IV puts it.

It seems to me that the invasion of our souther border by tens of thousands of hyper-fertile and uneducated Amerindians, and ominous intimations of an executive amnesty for 5 million illegal immigrants, have *enormous* implications for our civilization and ecology.

The massive population transfer from the low-polluting third world to high-polluting first world is not going to make it any easier to lower our carbon emissions, or shift to a sustainable economy.

All the major environmental groups used to oppose immigration precisely for this reason, but sold out to political correctitude in the 90s.(it’s racist to think that our environment isn’t improved by the addition of millions of Mexicans)

But it has sadly not gotten much attention. Would love to hear you interview one of the authors on the subject, since their take on the political implications of territorial carrying capacity obviously complements your own work.

What is to be preserved about us? Oh I don’t know, maybe our very physical existence for starters? You see, all the rest flows from that. Nothing is more ludicrous than assuming Western Culture without Western people. It would be like imagining Blacks taking over China and then calling it China.

It’s a good question. It reminds me of the question posed by the novelist John Fowles to those who venture a belief in the afterlife: What part of you do you think deserves to survive?

I expect when you think about it for a moment, you will realize that no particular thing presents itself as unassailably worthy of survival. That’s because your life is an assemblage of the arbitrary. Might this not equally be true of culture?

what is it about any race in the human species that must be preserved? Are we really all that appealing? 25,000 elephants gone from the continent of Africa last year. At least some species of animals work together and they don’t have egos. And we may not comprise the sharpest species in the shed of civilization when one considers the predicaments we have.

Yes, the looming extinction of elephants is especially depressing. But at least we can take comfort in the fact that elephants are dying for a good cause! Asians with stunted libidos are willing to pay top dollar for ivory, which apparently has aphrodisiac qualities. And what the planet needs is more Asians.

It’s especially nice to think that every time we buy an iPhone or a garment, we are indirectly financing elephant poaching. Another wonderful unintended consequence of globalization and cheap transportation.

I don’t hate humans. But we’re an invasive species that is way too populous. For all of history, until 1800, we kept our population stable, below 1 billion. And the stability was not necessary caused by a Malthusian situation, if some historical demographers are to be believed. All that stuff about chastity and not having kids unless you can afford to marry and invest in them was apparently not just patriarchal elitist sexist crap, but actually crucial to keeping the population from outstripping its resources.

There are more whites now than there have ever been. They’re not endangered, and the world would be better off with fewer of them. That said, whites are the only group that is actually stabilizing its population by having, on average, 2.1 kids per couple. Sadly, whites are subsidizing the reproduction of groups that are more fertile and less responsible.

This kind of Eco-thinking is a disease. All species love their own kind. As do all healthy human races. No other race cares for the animals like the White Race. So if you love them, love us who love them. Dare to love yourself.

Whites are not endangered. Their share of the global human population is shrinking because nonwhites are hyper fertile. For instance, Nigerian women have, on average, 7 children. That’s the *average.* And thanks to Western aid and technology, mortality rates have plummeted across the world, even in diseased Africa, allowing their populations–and thus their ecological impact–to explode.

There are more whites now than there have ever been. And, despite anxiety about miscegenation, whites on average intermarry with other races at a FAR lower rate than, for instance, blacks and hispanics. Steve Sailer has written a lot about this, if you know his blog (he’s now at the Unz review).

Human biodiversity is interesting. It’s neat to have different races and cultures. It would be much better if all groups were less populous, and if they were kept separate by well defined boundaries.

Don’t waste your time worrying about whites going extinct. They’re smart and strong and do well in cold climates. When the shit hits the fan, whites will be the ones seceding and running new villages in the north.

So because we’re strong, we should act weak and not protect our borders? Who told you that, the son of a barren women? While sitting by a dark fire on a square with three sides?

Clever stupidity. As if Whites in South Africa aren’t being driven into poverty and extinction, directly by genocide or indirectly by poor conditions. As if other White civilizations haven’t been ended or changed utterly by miscegenation.

You don’t care about your own people but remember: only Whites cares about the natural world. The hope of world is with us and no where else. It’s hard I know – it means you have to give up your self righteous hatred of your own people and admit we are superior. But everyone is going to have to give up something, right? So do your part.

Lol. Despite being a white female millennial in academia, I recently got married and am now trying to get pregnant. So I’m doing my part for whites. How about you? I don’t think pushing people’s buttons with white supremacism is doing much for whites. It’s a really good way to make people ignore you, though.

It’s true that all natural kinds, including races, are hardwired to prefer those who are more genetically similar to them. And I’m totally for the enforcement of our borders, the deportation of illegal aliens, and indeed a moratorium on future immigration. Ask my senate and house representatives. I call to complain about immigration so much that I’m on a first name basis with the little interns who answer their phones.

So although I love European civilization and want it to survive a collapse, I don’t equate prosperity with population growth. As I said before, **there are more whites now than there have ever been.** The global population of whites is estimated at 1.2 billion. So today’s white population exceeds the total global human population for 99% of human history. It’s crazy to suggest that whites are going extinct. When whites had their heyday in the Renaissance, there were only 500 million humans on the planet, less than half of the total white population today. If you want people to take you seriously, you shouldn’t call whites an endangered species. What you should say is what Pat Buchanan often says: the percentage of whites is decreasing relative to other races, and this is a problem for a number of reasons, not least of which is the fact that non-whites don’t give a shit about the environment. But the solution is not to increase the global population of whites. The globe is overpopulated, period. The solution is to create sustainable, racially homogenous states.

Ok, the ration of Whites to other Races is going downward precipitously – putting us in danger via resource shortage, government persecution against us in favor of other races, violent crime from other races, and finally genocide if we lose control completely as in South Africa.

My charge of endangerment stands. Whites don’t have any homeland of their own anymore. Not even Iceland. The governments of every White and formerly White Nation are against their own people.

Arguably whites have no business in Africa, no more than black and browns in Europe.

Here’s my solution: we repatriate all whites in Africa and South America to Europe, etc., and, in return, all blacks and browns in Europe are repatriated to Africa and South America.

Further consideration: are Arabs white? It depends on whom you ask. Arabs wishing to benefit from affirmative action and minority privilege say No. Arabs wishing to behead infidels also say No. I think the US Census currently says Yes.

Are you forgetting to take into account all of Russia’s *other* assets?

Like what? It’s 140 million people? Yes, you’re right, I almost forgot — they are assets to be thrown into the meat grinder when the time comes. Stalin had no problem grinding up all those fresh bodies, and since Putin has channeled Stalin on occasion in his mythologizing of Russian history perhaps he can follow in Stalin’s footsteps and waste at least half the population securing his ego.

Of course, as you’ve noted, Winter is another of Russia’s assets (although I’m not sure how we value that on the balance sheet — let’s ask Ernst & Young to cook up a Black–Scholes type model)— but for how long with alleged Global Warming nipping at Putin’s heels?

No. Stalin was a Georgian and a Communist. Communist don’t value any nation’s history prior to Communism. You’re conflating Communism with Fascism – a common but egregious mistake.They are in fact opposites, and thus share a superficial resemblance as opposites sometimes do.

More “boots” on the ground? Seriously? Although the thought of it and a George C. Scott Patton speech gives BRH a soaking wet pair of panties, I am surprised that a deep thinker such as JHK is seemingly inferring that be the course.

Been there done that; that old nail just pops up someplace else. In fact, the only thing ‘more boots on the ground’ would accomplish is to further embolden those being temporarily pounded down.

Unlike the prospect of a naked body best left to the imagination, more boots on the ground would only once again demonstrate how incapable the U.S is at that aspect of war…revealing our saggy tits and soft blubbery belly to the paradoxical delight of those ‘being drilled’.

You still don’t get it. Do you really think ISIS is going to confront a Marine or Airborne division? No, they will meld back into the general population and the unwelcome intrusion of foreign troops and the inevitable death of innocent civilians will only result in more ISIS type fanatics. According to what I have read a million innocent Iraq civilians were killed in order to destroy the “Weapons of Mass Destruction” and during the subsequent occupation. How many of the surviving family members are now terrorists, or at least terrorist sympathizers? Yes and “sympathizer” is an important distinction because all of this strife starts and ends right between the ears in the land of gray matter.

In fact, the best way to confront ISIS is exactly the way they’re attempting to do it, not that it will prove successful in the long run either. A few covert boots on the ground transmitting location targets to the Drones of Death.

A Marine or Airborne division? Ha, you make me laugh BRH. You might as well throw a boulder into a fishing pond.

And as far as ‘Bath House Barry’ you reveal your far right sentiments with that comment as only the far right lunatics use that term. Which is a curious sentiment because as I recall, via your own revelation/admission, you made your living feeding at the Govt. trough. But to answer your question specifically, we Americans have been reduced to voting for the smallest turd in the toilet for decades now. Perhaps it has always been that way.

We live in an incoherent land populated with incoherent people. People who on one hand assert the reality of diminishing resources, while on the other lamenting the lack of a perpetual war effort (more troops on the ground) in faraway lands populated with religious lunatics. “Silly human race” –YES indeed.

If Hamas were to use the building materials it smuggled into Gaza over the past 10 years to develop local industry instead of miles of tunnels and thousands of rockets, not only would the local economy be thriving, but Israel would have stopped its trade restrictions on Gaza, as the only purpose of those restrictions has been to limit the rocket and tunnel-building industries. The simple fact is that those restrictions do not exist on Palestinians in the West Bank. I’m amazed by all the people who read Kunstler, but don’t understand the logic of his view on Hamas. Israelis are not colonialists, as Hamas and Naomi Klein and their supporters would like one to believe. Israelis do not have another country to which they could move (and thereby enable Palestinians to live in a country without Jews). Kunstler’s pro-Palestinian readers also seem unable to understand that Israel must respond to Hamas rocket fire. The rockets force Israelis, especially in the south, to flee to safer parts of the country or to live in bomb shelters, meaning that the rockets have a severe effect on people’s livelihoods and quality of life. The rockets are stored in and fired from residential neighborhoods of Gaza, so those neighborhoods must be targeted by Israel. Israel’s military generally tries to evacuate such neighborhoods before attacking them, which means that Israel tries to reduce civilian casualties even though it means that Hamas has time to evacuate its weapons as well. If Israel were weaker, it would be more desperate, and the number of casualties would be far larger.

What I will say is that Putin is __effective__. We might not like the way he does things, but *does* get things done in a coherent manner, in stark contrast to others.

Effective? Effective at what, precisely? Sitting on top of massive energy reserves and hoping the price skyrockets 3,000% as it has? Pure genius. Shutting down all opposition and dissent and setting yourself up as dictator? Yep, he’s pretty effective at it, I’ll give him that.

What’s most interesting about your taunting for Putin is if the shoe was on the other foot, and you were in Moscow criticizing Putin’s Russia and lauding the benefaction of America and The West, you’d be silenced rather quickly.

And apparently that’s just fine with you and that’s what bothers me most about those critics of America who say even one positive thing about Putin, because it all starts with freedom to express and I believe there are more than a few in that crowd I just mentioned who would like nothing more than to see a Putin-like crackdown on dissent and expression implemented in America and The West. And that stinks to high heaven. And despite protestations to the contrary, you are still able to express rather freely in America than most places around the world including Russia.

By the way, your military service carries no weight or truck with me. Credentials blithely claimed on the internet by anonymous sources are not credentials. That betrays your anonymity. If you want to be anonymous, I understand and respect that, but if that’s your wish then don’t abuse it by claiming credentials that cannot be verified and validated.

At my blog, a commentator has already uncovered one prolific internet impostor who has done just that. It’s a common tactic on the internets, and when I see it, I call it out.

Keep it up, and you’ll put me on your trail because you will forfeit that anonymity. If you’re anonymous, keep it impersonal, meaning there is no you and there is no me besides a clever, or not so clever, name on a screen and our observations and opinions about the topic at hand.

Since you’re anonymous, you have no credentials IRL to claim as an authority. If you want to claim those credentials, then post your name, rank and serial number so we can verify and validate.

That being said, just because someone may have been in the military doesn’t give them a pass in carrying water for tyrants. I have stated this many times, but I’ll state it again because it applies here. The perceived enemy of your perceived enemy is not your perceived friend. Perceived is the operative word. You don’t counter tyranny with tyranny. You don’t applaud and laud tyranny. You understand the context in which your statements are made and how they can and will be taken and interpreted.

America, like any great power in history, is deserved of much criticism, but it also can’t be blamed for every ill of the world as many died-in-the-blue anti-Americans would, and do, have it. Those same critics latch onto to any power group and its leader that comes along to challenge America, carrying water for it and apologizing for it.

My focus and sentiment as of late has been to flush out and expose this line of reasoning trend because I believe it’s a purposeful trap and ruse for the naive who have just begun to question the narrative that’s been fed to them their entire lives.

I believe that’s why certain provocateurs hang out at blogs like CFN and other such venues because those who begin their foray into questioning the defining narrative of their lives thus far may start with venues such as this so it’s good strategy to flip them to another camp of tyranny before they figure it out entirely.

Such people who would do such a thing are as scummy as it gets. It’s an ultimate betrayal of free thought and expression because those who have the gumption to question that narrative are in a highly vulnerable state and ripe for exploitation, and I have nothing but contempt for anyone who perpetrates such a further incarceration on a person, or persons, who are trying to break free.

The naked truth is Russia is in a far better position geopolitically than America, since we squandered our oil on a useless car culture that made Rockefeller rich but accomplished little else. Fundamentally communism beats capitalism because it spreads resources out better, making them last longer. If Putin closes the spigot, what will happen to the world? Chaos. He can name his price, oil will go to $300 a barrel, and we’ll pay. Who’s gonna stop him? Us? Ha! I say HA! HA! HA! We couldn’t even beat Vietnam in a land war in Asia, how you think we’re gonna do against Mother Russia? I’ll tell you how, just like the French and Germans.

Reply to Cassandra-Aug. 26 at 1:39 PM. Elephants dying for a good cause, right, I sense the sarcasm. I like the part of your comment about the purchase of I phones, etc. contributing to their demise and our ability to do so due to the wonderful world of globalization by way of cheap transportation. Oh how grand. That’s one reason I own no I phone. I don’t hate humans either, but question our intelligence. Dont’ worry about the whites, no, , the reality TV families will repopulate the earth, as we go down with our I phones in hand, watching them in a stupor on our television sets.

And a big P.S. on that. Disposable diapers should be banned, then everyone may think twice about having more children!. Then again, farming making a come back,at one time whites had more children to help on the farm.

I commend you for not owning an iPhone. I feel really guilty about all my Apple products. I wish I could pay more for devices of similar quality that were made without exploiting the environment or other animals.

Have you seen Idiocracy? Intelligence and fertility are negatively correlated for 500 years, and hilarity ensues. Kunstler would rightfully note that it’s unrealistic to think that in 500 years there will be enough cheap energy to power the cars and such that appear in the film.

I think Europeans and Asians are really smart but are morally retarded. The human rights discourses that have dominated the West since the 17th century make it impossible to evaluate industrial or economic practices in any other terms than human growth and prosperity. What we’re doing to other animals is unconscionable. Derrida likens what we’re doing to farm animals in industrial slaughter operations to what the Nazis did to the Jews–except that the Nazis didn’t also BREED Jews in order to have billions more to slaughter, forever.

Regrettably, all the ostensibly Palestinian-sympathetic positions taken against Israel belie a deeper, sinister, motivation to act against Israel, perhaps with the thinking that if Israel to fail, to cease, all the world’s problems, or at least all of the troubling problems stemming from the ME would dissipate… forever. Israel resides in a neighborhood where existential threats against it are the first order of business for the big players including a holocaust denying state that bombed an American Marine barracks, an oil rich terrorism exporting country where westerners are denied and excluded from entry into some of its most important cities, where women can neither drive nor leave the confines of their home without a full body shroud, and where a majority of the 9-11 hijackers and the mastermind emanated from; and two failed states where the dominant rebel group crucifies and massacres children and adults, and decapitates western journalists in the name of islamic conquest of the entire region (including Israel), yet, incredibly yet, Israel is questioned as to why it maintains an unflinching course why it refuses to cede another inch, why it does not dither and vacillate. It’s almost too absurd to contemplate.

Of course I agree with you. It’s just that the people who hate Israel can’t admit to themselves they really hate Jews. And if you call them on that, they turn it around on you and say that accusing them of anti-semitism is the only answer a Jew can use to defend the terrible things that Israel does. That kind of response doesn’t allow for any criticizing of the criticizers.

I try to keep things simple. Just let Islamic countries put into writing that Israel has a right to exist. Do that and problem solved. That will never happen though. When someone tells me they’re going to wipe me off the face of the Earth, I take it seriously.

The only reason Jews around the world still exist is because they refuse to take any more shit from everyone else.

Why do people continue to threaten Jews, given their history of actual attempts to wipe them out, can you blame some Israelis for being a bit nuts. Having said that the Palestinian situation clearly doesn’t do either side any favors long term. Perhaps someone needs to start a clusterfuck world blog.

YamakaBill,
Maybe you should examine why jews are easily the most widely reviled outfit on earth……detested by almost everyone…..hated more than all the moronic moslems and ghetto africans put together. Think about it…….

It’s yarmulka, you uneducated shit. As to why Jews are historically reviled, it is because for over1800 years the Catholic Church told their believers that the Jews killed Christ. Like I’m responsible for his death? You don’t even know who I am, Shithead, or what I’m like, yet you disparage me just because I’m a Jew.

People will be hateful so as to be hateful. They want to illicit a rise, a reaction. They want to feel life through a heated exchange, albeit a virtual one. This is emblematic of a society that does not foster or promote personal encounters and civil exchanges. Instead we have angry people so desperate for human contact, discourse, intellectual (I use this term in the figurative sense of course) exchange that they resort to taking very strong positions that demand a response, a compulsory connection with the stranger on the other end that shall not go unaddressed. Imagine the conversations here taking place in an early 20th century coffee house. The reasonable man would never speak or act this way in another’s company. Why does it happen here? It’s a virtual society linked blindly through the ether where the human-interaction starved participants are hidden behind their computer screens in their suburban fortress safe from the humans, our own worst enemy. This is the virtual realm where the crackpot cannot be shamed or argued down in public. This is what “progress” hath wrought. Humanity is doomed, and rightly so.

“It seems obvious to me that Jews make an ideal scapegoat for any country experiencing social, economic, or political difficulties. The reason for this is twofold. First of all, there is hardly a country in the world that does not have a Jewish segment in the population. And secondly, wherever Jews reside, they are a minority of the population, and a small minority at that, so that they are not powerful enough to defend themselves against a mass attack. It is very easy for governments to divert attention from their own mistakes by blaming Jews for this or that political theory, such as communism or socialism.

For instance, after the First World War, many Germans accused the Jews first of starting the war and then of losing it. This is nothing new, of course. Throughout history, Jews have been accused of all sorts of treachery, such as poisoning water wells or murdering children as religious sacrifices. Much of this can be attributed to jealousy, because, despite the fact that Jewish people have always been thinly populated in various countries, they have always had a disproportionate number of outstanding public figures.”

So they are innocent of all charges? They are 100 and their accusers 0? They were thrown out of nearly every country in Europe for nothing? Sure, just like the guy whose been thrown out of every bar in town.

You are credulous in the extreme. They own the media and thus they own your mind.

Anyway, it’s only very early Wednesday morning, so enough with the Jews already. Why don’t we comment on real issues like overpopulation, energy depletion and environmental destruction, among many others? Every few days I need to satisfy my urge to bash the anti-Jew bashers. I’m satisfied for now.

Okay all you M.E., poli-sci, diplomacy geniuses, who TF dreamt up this “plan” [truckloads of splintered bone and torn meat, with an appetizing side of rubble] and how do these things get unilaterally acted upon?? Think about THAT for just about 2 seconds if you will. (I know, it’s difficult while mulling distractionary irrelevancies, but give it a shot.)

[Snip]
“So to summarize:
…the limited airstrikes in Iraq (which the Iraqi government did not ask for) now appear to be expanding into ’24/7 carpet-bombing’ of ISIS targets in Syria (which the US are not asking permission or forgiveness for) and in the interests of “fairness doctrine” America will bomb al-Assad’s military installations to maintain some ‘balance’ between the moderate terrorists, extreme terrorists (and national armies), and scary-as-shit terrorists…”

Or, perhaps Obomba got the memo from the Joint Chiefs and their neo-con handlers. It reads: “Kill ‘em all and let god sort ‘em out. When we control the resources of the entire world, you’re reward will be commensurate.”

It’s time to give some hard thought as to what this kind of policy-making REALLY represents and whose interests are served, rather than the obfuscating bullshit concerning humanitarian mass-slaughter that always accompanies these “limited actions”.

…Mayhap some understanding will be gleaned when a limited action (Military, Police, Fatherland Security) visits your area. The phrase, “while you were sleeping”, comes to mind

Yes it’s the war against the Shia by other means. Since we refused to give the Merry Sunni Murderers air support against Assad, now we have to fight them in Syria and just accidently destroy Assad. This will fool no one except 95% of Americans. We could get clobbered for this and we would deserve to do so. Hezbollah will come in and fight for Assad and we can expect strikes in all kinds of places. They have said they view Israel, America, NATO, NWO as all one thing. And they are correct to do so.

“The fantasy that we can sustain our influence nine thousand miles away, when we can’t even get our act together in Ohio is just a dark joke. One might state categorically that it would be a salubrious thing for America to knock off all its vaunted “dreaming” and just wake the fuck up.”-J H K, 2008.

That too. (Very good.)
One more thing, since you’ve brought up a timeline perspective:
In 2008 the govt. of the US decided it was going to go public (and whole hog) with the financial shenanigans. That move was willful, blatant and hubris-laden craziness to those of us who had been watching the narrative unfold, instead of hoping everything would work out okay. …Well, the legerdemain and smoke and mirrors baffled the rubes with bullshit didn’t it? Like a charm.

Now look where we’ve devolved to in just that short 6 years time! (That’s not even to mention the horror of “The Bush Years” previous.) Full-on, padded-cell, frothing-at-the-mouth, bat-shit crazy.
I’m beginning to believe it’s “all designed to blow out minds”, or a deliberate campaign of acclimation to everything antithetical to Constitutional protections and allowances. Does that make me crazy, overly suspicious, or simply a reasonably aware citizen, possessed of [officially] unsanctioned ‘inkings’?

And, yes, I agree with volodya that “the world” is not OUR plaything, but a certain select few appear to consider it exactly in that light. All I’m hopeful for is the crushing of this dangerous delusion (as well as some others of suicidal import). Before anything else, predicament-wise, can be examined with some seriousness, that has to be among the first and foremost. (I leave it to everyone to figure out why that might be…)

The name ‘Israel’ is thought to have originated in Egypt prior to the Mosaic revolution. At that time, the Hebrews – never fully assimilated into Egyptian society – were designated as the children of Isis, Ra and El. Isis and Ra are, of course, Egyptian. But El is the ancient sky-god of Mesopotamia.

In their nomadic pre-Egyptian days the Hewbrews found the sky-god a real convenience; he was invisible and ever-present. This kept their theology lean and relieved them of the need to lug about cumbersome idols – a real survival advantage for wanderers!

Political legitimacy, whatever that may mean in the long run, derives from superior weaponry to paraphrase Mao. Superior morality has nothing to do with it. Israel is no more nor less “manufactured” than the United States or any other polity that now exists or has ever existed. The migration of peoples continues. Apart from parts of Africa, perhaps, no polity associated with a particular piece of real estate can claim that “we arose, ab initio, from this soil.” Even so, good luck proving that claim in the International Court, much as Israel will have no luck proving that “God gave this land to us.” Practical morality exists among and between individuals. As people align themselves into larger and larger groups convenient slogans are created to demonize and finally annihilate “The Other.” It is difficult to conceive turning the other cheek to ISIS.

Excellent observation, FP; the Palestinians at the turn of the last century might be seen as akin to the American Indians just prior to the European invasion of the 1600s onward – an odd, backward lot, ripe for the pickin’.

Sooner or latter power vacuums will be filled. The people of Israel should not be held to standards that the rest of humanity has seen fit to ignore.

But the Jews have fancied themselves the conscience of humanity. They are the ones who imposed these standards – which they never had any intention of following.

One Jewish friend once told me that the Jews “gave us or conscience” – a very heavy handed interpretation of the Mosiac revelation. The Church Fathers rejected such thinking, admitting that Pagans could be saved if they listened to the Natural Law that was within their hearts.

God created the Universe Ex Nihilo – out of nothing. We then rose out of the Elements, De Novo/Ab Initio, guided by His immortal hand. Another possibility: our bodies evolved and then our spirits incarnated once the bodies were fit vehicles. Thus the original sin was probably mating with the animal men such as Homo Erectus who were not ensouled. Could the Black Races be an example of such matings? Google Homo Erectus Walks Among Us – an online book.

That’s exactly the opposite of what genomic sequencing of human and Neanderthal indicates. I don’t know if they’ve sequenced the genome of homo erectus. You should read Greg Cochran’s blog, West Hunter, if you’re interested in early human history and genetics.

Sub-saharan Africans are the only humans who don’t have Neanderthal admixture. This suggests that mating with Neanderthals gave humans out of Africa some major advantage, probably related to tolerating colder temperatures.

You can get an ancestry report that tells what percent Neanderthal you are. 23andMe does it for $99. It gives you a ton of other interesting info too. I am 2.7% Neanderthal, which puts me in the 49th percentile for Europeans. My husband is in the 99th percentile, which actually did not surprise me at all.

Lots of low-IQ populations have Neanderthal admixture, including Amerindians and South Asians, so geneticists are ruling out the IQ contribution. They’re not yet sure what the Neanderthal genes do, but the cold toleration is a common theory. The high IQ of whites and east asians is almost certainly the result of millennia of agriculture and complex economies.

You should read Nicholas Wade’s books, Before the Dawn, and his latest–right up your alley–A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race, and Human History. It would allow you to speak more knowledgeably about the historical and genetic evidence for the racial basis of behavior. Also, because Wade is the former editor of Nature and the science writer for the NYT, you can wave his credentials as proof of political neutrality.

Cochran and Harpending’s book, The 10,000 Year Explosion, is also very readable and relevant.

I haven’t read the books yet, but there is an economic historian, Gregory Clark, who has two books, A Farewell to Alms and The Son Also Rises (he is a Hemingway fan) presenting really fascinating evidence that Western societies have actually evolved middle class behaviors–low time preference, high IQ, etc.–since the middle ages.

It’s impossible to prove the negative that god doesn’t exist, and I have seen no positive evidence that god does exist.

Is ISIS beastly? No doubt. I mean, if Al Qaeda says they go too far… Is Assad a bloody butcher? Yes, truly, hard to dispute that characterization. Is it awful that so many Palestinian kids got killed in Gaza? Yes. But isn’t Hamas just a scream, you know, firing rockets indiscriminately all over Israel and then shrieking when Israel retaliates? Real jokers those guys.

Ultimately though, so what? Troubling and regrettable maybe but when you compare the magnitude of the Middle Eastern troubles over the decades to the period 1914-1980 in Europe and Asia (with body counts in the hundreds of millions) it’s like comparing the common cold to the Black Plague. Ah yes, I forgot, the Middle East has oil.

Maybe more importantly, and I hate to bring this up, but isn’t Iran busily acquiring nuclear devices? Yeah I know, they say they aren’t, swear to God and hope to die. Do you believe them? I don’t. And, if they do have ambitions of becoming a nuclear power, you have to ask, to what end? Is it all about the USA? Or all about Israel? Maybe not.

It’s not always all about America, or Israel, hard as it is for Americans and Jews to swallow. Try to imagine an age-old civilization like Iran’s, militarily aggressive since day one, its own territorial ambitions and history and rivalries and political factions and ideologies and interests.

Imagine also a long and violent rivalry with a competing version of Islam. Imagine that maybe 98% of what Iranians are about has got bugger-all to do with Americans or Jews.

Hard to imagine? Imagine yourself an Iranian. Imagine that you don’t answer to New York or Washington but rather to people in Teheran or Qum. Maybe you have your own business, maybe you have a farm, maybe you work for an Iranian employer. And imagine yourself as the inheritor of intellectual and cultural and religious traditions that have got sweet FA to do with anything you grew up with and were taught in school.

Tough to do, isn’t it, when you don’t grow up immersed and living there. Much easier to drink up what the lame stream media, Ameri-centric pundits and academics and Washington propagandists tell you. They tell you that American values are universal values that all people aspire to what Americans want and have, you know, liberty and freedom and a car in the driveway.

Well, what if all this is dead wrong? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have special knowledge, I put this out there as possibilities, to maybe explain the complete and utter fiasco of US foreign policy. You might say (and maybe you’re right) that an Afghan farmer and his wife wouldn’t mind having clean drinking water and a steady supply of electricity and refrigeration. But, so what, these aren’t necessarily incompatible with local ways. The point is, IMO, if your foreign policy starts out with disastrously faulty or incomplete knowledge of a place and its people you generally end up with disastrous results, which is what we have now.

But maybe there are even bigger problems. Pakistan already has nukes. So does India. Much more troubling especially if nihilistic factions take control of arsenals in the subcontinent. Imagine a Taliban controlled Pakistan.

And here’s the same question, what does it have to do with the US? Or Israel? Maybe, again, very little, maybe the Pakistani power elite have got concerns and ambitions that have squat to do with America or Israel. Imagine that their focus is on a long and deadly rivalry with India. Imagine that they have internal factions contending for power.

Just think, days and nights pre-occupied with maintaining their power, their wealth, their estates inside Pakistan. Imagine their fear of semi-literate or illiterate medievalists in their midst, people who have no hesitation to kill. Imagine all of this having absolutely fuck all to do with the US.

Imagine, as hard as it is, that Pakistanis wish to God that the USA stays the hell out of their business and imagine their thinking the infernal gall of Americans thinking that Pakistanis need clearance from Washington. Imagine even the most hard-assed Taliban leader wishing and praying for Americans to get lost.

Try to imagine 9/11 in that light, that of a foreign power entangled in the tribal and national politics of peoples it has very little idea about.

“It’s not always all about America, or Israel, hard as it is for Americans and Jews to swallow. Try to imagine an age-old civilization like Iran’s, militarily aggressive since day one, its own territorial ambitions and history and rivalries and political factions and ideologies and interests.”-volodya.

This is an extremely intelligent way to frame things, Volodya. You really seem to have the right mindset for Analysis – as opposed the knee-jerk, reactionary emoting that all too often passes for a rational discussion.

“Imagine even the most hard-assed Taliban leader wishing and praying for Americans to get lost.”-volodya.

That IS actually the way it is on the ground. Talabani and al-Haqqani leadership cannot *wait* for the US to GTFO so they can get back to taking care of business – with each other.

Very insightful! Volodya, swimming in deep waters you have been. America like Narcissus is bewitched by his own reflection can’t grok what you say. Anything beyond America’s own sweet reflection is unseen and out of mind.

Ah, young men and death cults–it would be fun if it weren’t so dangerous. I’ve noticed that the media shifts in histrionic focus from one big, incendiary story to the next over the course of a few weeks, so the Gaza war and ISIS have blended into the Saint Michael Brown furor for me. As a millenial in academia, I’ve seen otherwise intelligent people bent completely prostrate in this media kowtowing to the next new victim-hero. In every case, you must defer to the image of ‘protest’–it is almost shocking how this image alone wins the argument. In the social media age, it must contain all the pent-up desires for violence and firm belief, with a healthy dose of losing one’s first-world self-loathing by pretending to be one’s own destroyer. These are the same people, I suppose, that were actually surprised the so-called Arab Spring quickly devolved into marauding, rape, and, of course, the rise of even more militant extremism. The complete effacement of masculinity in progressive circles in the West (I’ve gotten so tired of hearing the term ‘masculinist’ or ‘patriarchal’ bandied about as insults without explanation) seems to not only create extremism in the bite-back, but an atavistic sympathy in the sensitive types with the men shooting in the air and pillaging the ruins. Giving up or lashing out are of course easier than man-ning up, rebuilding, and holding together a society in the face of troubled–i.e., all–times (certainly we see the latter, lashing out, in what I’ll call the Ferguson culture, where the women are left to mourn and try to scrape out a living while the men leave them with kids, chaos, and a horrendous crime rate).

Political Correctness is a religion. And it teaches that Whites are evil. Blacks, being the most alien to Whites, are the most sacred, even more than other minorities. And of course they suffered slavery. Whites can never pay that bill. Individual justice is just a capitalist value. Race justice and reparations is where it’s at. So much for “contents of character”, eh?

One of the secret teachings of the cult is that Whites must be exterminated since they are the “cancer of humanity” as high priestess Susan Sontag said. High Liberal Tom Hayden said that he was very happy when his son married a Black woman. He said he wanted to see Whites peacefully bred out of existence.

PCness is an ideology, not a religion. Religion posits some sort of supernatural power than influences worldly affairs. There’s nothing supernatural about PCness. But it is based on the false supposition that all humans are born equal, and that any differences are caused by postnatal environment. In the long run–like 50,000 year run–it is true that variation in human groups has been caused by their wandering all over the planet and evolving as they adapt to the different territories and societies they created. But in the short run, nature, not nurture, matters. (Except for nurturing that influences future reproduction–that is EXTREMELY important. If they teach anything in school, they should teach teenage girls to avoid getting pregnant at all costs, and if girls must reproduce, to get knocked up by smart guys with low time preferences.)

I have read population geneticists claim that they could close the black white IQ gap over the course of a few generations by limiting reproduction to top 10% of blacks. Of course the opposite is actually happening, and not just among blacks.

I’m amazed at your ability. I’ve met high IQ women, but very few of them were willing and/or able to think outside their narrow field. But you are far ahead of most men as well – certainly the liberals who inhabit this site. I’ve heard of Wade’s book and it sounds like I should read it. Evidently the Establishment is choosing to deal with it by ignoring it and him – in contrast to what they did to the hapless Watson. Political Correctness is a human sacrifice cult.

You have a point about it not being a religion. But the line is thin: such things often serve as a religion for their devotees in the psychological sense. Ever talk to a Larouche zombie? Or any member of a communist party? The same glassy eyes as the Moonie.

Since Atheism does concern the Supernatural in that it rejects it, it is a religion of no religion. Thus if religion is +1, Atheism is -1. Agnosticism is the neutral point of 0. That’s what you should be if you don’t believe in God, an agnostic.

Hatred draws beings together after all. Saul became Paul. And if you want to get rid of someone, be polite to them.

The problem is that most educated whites who rail against racism don’t actually have any experience of living with non-asian minorities. This is a direct consequence of suburbanization of America (which itself is a consequence of cheap fossil fuels).

When suburban living becomes prohibitively expensive as fuel prices rise, all the song and dance about “structural racism” and “micro aggressions” are going to be replaced probably by old fashioned racism and discrimination.

But remember my perspective is ultimately a wacko environmentalist one. Humans are just like other animals. We’re not exempt from evolution or speciation. And human races are different–they’re not yet separate species because they’re still interfertile. Wade speculates that the races will become different species at some point in the future, unless miscegenation prevents it.

And ultimately we’re not exempt from resource shortages and the carrying capacity of the planet.

No, atheism would be supernatural if it posited a supernatural reason to explain why god doesn’t exist. I will become agnostic when I see evidence of supernatural powers.

Eh, these endless ideological separations of groups are part of the problem (the artificial separation–as in it only exists ideologically, but not in any actual social structure– of women from men in feminist politics, the obvious holding of different political/ethnic groups to different moral standards, etc). What we need are clearer standards of behavior, but that won’t happen any time soon–perhaps we need to bring back just the mere idea that standards of behavior are useful.

Remember Gresham’s Law – it has wide implications beyond the financial. Bad money drives out good, Bad Islam drives out good Islam, violent Races drive out peaceful Races, etc. The racial tipping point is apparently around 30%. When Blacks reach that number, their behavior changes and they really begin to throw their weight around – and Whites run for their lives and before their property values plummet. Last one out is a pauper….

No one believes in that universal stuff anymore – except power mad bureaucrats of the New World Ordure.

How much swag has the Federal Reserve and the US treasurey passed out to investment banks, brokerages, commercial banks, international banks, auto manufacturers and insurance companies ($20 billlion to Hartford Insurance Group, $192 billion to AIG, after which they threw an extravagent party in the Hamptons that lasted an entire month) since 2008? I’ve read anywhere from $17 to $25 trillioin. Alot of people must be living large on that money right now, set up for life.

In the local paper yesterday:

A 23 year old mother of two was arrested for under reporting her hours at the fast food restaurant where she worked to the State unemloyment office, collecting an extra $50-100 per week she was not entitled to. She told investigators (“we just want to ask you a few questions. This won’t take long”) she needed the money to pay the rent and buy groceries for her kids. She faces up to 20 years in prison for fraud and larceny, and may face additional charges because she made her UE claim over the internet (where they make you file your claim).

It’s all part of the System Collapse routine: paying more and more to accomplish less and less.

Consider: how much will the ‘recover’ from this petty thief after you factor in the cost of the investigation, conviction, sentencing and incarceration?

The whole operation will be ridiculously upside-down before she spends her first day in ‘slam’.

Contrarily, how much would have been saved by the US Government, it’s constituent taxpayers, our loyal allies and trade partners if Sheila Bair of the FDIC had simply been allowed to do her job – neutralizing insolvent financial institutions – back in 2008?

After finishing some personal changes in the governing bodies of “Self-proclaimed” Rebel Republics (aren’t the USA self-proclaimed as well?) of SE Ukraine and consolidation of it fighting units into a coherent army with analytic center most likely somewhere in Russia, the Novorossia armed forces went into offensive in the South to get a foothold on the shores of Azov Sea – very close to Crimea.
At the same time Putin is not breaking any international laws – all Russian volunteers are not current members of Russian Army (may be recently quit or taking long sabbaticals). However, I am pretty sure that all Russian volunteers had REALLY volunteered for the SE Ukrainian fight, since all Russian World (including yours truly) consider the fight in Ukraine as fight for Mother Russia. Estimated 10% of members of Novorossia Army are Russian volunteers, but there are all kinds of Volunteers – from Serbia, Poland, Spain and even France.
Rebel’s tanks are already in Novoasovsk; Mariupol is expected to be next shortly. Ukrainian “Army” is running like pack of rats.
Ukrainian prisoners of war are being handed over to their relatives in Donetsk and Luhansk (members of SS Units guilty of genocidal actions excluded): purely pragmatic approach – good propaganda and less food to waste.

However, I am pretty sure that all Russian volunteers had REALLY volunteered for the SE Ukrainian fight, since all Russian World (including yours truly) consider the fight in Ukraine as fight for Mother Russia. Estimated 10% of members of Novorossia Army are Russian volunteers, but there are all kinds of Volunteers – from Serbia, Poland, Spain and even France.
Rebel’s tanks are already in Novoasovsk; Mariupol is expected to be next shortly.

Sweet! Sounds just like ISIS in The Levant — Russians and Russian sympathizers (Pat Buchanan and Paul Craig Roberts included) fighting to establish a Russian Caliphate across the entirety of Europe.

Some truth in that. And Putin is a great Fighter against the New World Order, even as Hitler was before him. But have you read Dugin? Putin seems to want to rebuild the Soviet Union in an eastern direction at least. Dugin repudiates Russian as a Western Nation. This is very bad indeed.

One Conspiracy theorist, Skousen, postulates that both Russian and China have their own versions of Globalism. Others disagree saying that China is already in bed with the NWO.

I think you misread Mr.Dugin. Russia is already integrated in the Eastern direction – up to Pacific. Where else to go?

And Dugin is quite correct in repudiating Western set of values as applicable to the Russian Civilization. I have lived in both countries and know it from personal experiences.

However, being different is not being “good” or “bad” – just different. You have to admit that USA had its best when competing with the USSR – things started to go bugshit just around the time USSR was no more.

It was a short time in the 90s when USA enjoyed its brief decade of “prosperity”, it was really the time of looting of old Soviet heritage and when it ran out (around 99 with Putin changing the Kremlin politics), things went totally downhill.

I would skip replying to things like “New World Order”, because I really do not know what that is.

However, Globalization is different matter. In my opinion, “Globalization” is process of complete global separation of labor, which is objective and, overall, positive thing since it enhances human productivity.

However, the Underlying principles of “Globalization” could be quite different and I agree that Russians have different model of that process.

It is really complex subject, but to be brief I would submit to you that the “fair” principle of Globalization, in Russian view, would be something like sophisticated “Barter of goods and services”, not based on monetary principles, and definitely not based on the preferential position of any particular currency (or monetary metal) with Nation’s Central Banks serving as control and accounting centers of international trade.

May be original Bretton Woods model (before US default in 1971) when Nations had to settle their trade deficits with gold bullion payment once a year. However, I am not fan of gold and maybe some other settlement instrument could be found.

Also, rejecting of New Colonial Model when so called “developed” countries sells their goods at very high prices to “developing” Nations, while getting their resources for cheap.

Yeah I’ve always wondered about some of these issues. The undeveloped nations are poor, but things are very cheap. The average citizen in some of these places may be better off than our poor. May – I don’t know. The Capitalist and Communist propaganda wont just report the truth about questions like this.

Globalism is problematic for the same reason: infinite greedy desire wants to push aside boundaries, borders, languages, races, and nations in order to get their hands on the goodies, either resources or markets. As Rockefeller said, “Resources must be decoupled from the nations in which they reside. What I want is the opposite of all that: the preservation of Nations and Races. Infinite variety. Real diversity not just a diversity of identical products produced on the backs of denaturalized peasants.

When I was younger even the United Nations sounded great. But in reality it was always something quite different. But yes, break the banks and let nations trade as they will directly, without the Octopus/Squid middle men sucking up all the profits. That’s what WW2 was all about in reality. Germany had to be crushed before other nations copied its winning formula. That’s the real secret after all: the economic miracle of Nazi Germany. That’s what can’t be revealed.

What do you make noise, folk vitii?
Why do you threaten anathema Russia?
What angered you? excitement of Lithuania?
Leave: this is a dispute between the Slavs themselves,
Home, an old argument, so weighted by fate,
Question that you do not allow.

It has long been among themselves
These warring tribes;
Not once was falling under the storm
They, then our side.
Who can stand in the unequal dispute:
Puffy Lyakh, Or faithful Ross?
Slavic eh streams merge into Russian sea?
Eh it dry up? is the question.

Leave us: you have not read
These bloody tablets;
You do not understand, you alien
And this family feud;
You speechless Kremlin and Prague;
Pointless seduces you
Fight a desperate courage –
And you hate us …

For what? responds: for you,
With the ruins of burning Moscow
We do not recognize impudent will
Addition, under whom you tremble?
For Mademoiselle, which pushed into the abyss
We are tending in the kingdoms idol
And our blood atoned
Europe’s freedom, honor, and peace? ..

You menacing in words – try it in action!
Or an old hero, the late to bed,
Unable to screw up your Ismail bayonet?
Or the Russian Tsar already powerless word?
Or we argue with Europe’s new?
Or Russian lost the habit of winning?
Il few of us? Or from Perm to Tauris,
From the Finnish rock to fiery Frigid Colchis
From the shock of the Kremlin
Motionless to the walls of China
Steel bristles glittering
Snaps Russian land? ..

Well so send us vitii,
His embittered sons:
There is place them in the fields of Russia,
Among them nechuzhdyh coffins.

What is your viewpoint about all this? Jim hates Truthers but I can’t get over the Israeli connection, the surveillance, the dancing men on a nearby building, etc. Perhaps Lucky Larry is such a good friend of Israel that he got special consideration, real special. Some say no Israeli citizens came to work at the Twin Towers that day. Of course lots of American Jews not so well connected did.

Maybe Bibi should tell Larry to cool it though. Larry is really pushing it now.

Israel is most assuredly responsible for 9/11, from assisting the attack to pre-wiring the towers and building 7 with demolitions. There are 28 pages of blacked out of the commission report. 28 pages implicating Israel in the attack. To view the pages, which some in Congress have, you need to go into some cryptic room overseen by the CIA and you’re not allowed to record or photograph anything. Why aren’t these 28 pages being unclassified for the media and the population to review? Because it would throw the entire world into chaos…revealing the true nature of our “allies” and our own complicity for terror.

It’s always a red flag for me when seemingly intelligent journalists, writers and activists who are right about so many things always side with Israel. JHK knows the power structure of the world and understands the many dangerous predicaments we currently find ourselves grappling with…but he is either just ignorant about Israel or is rightfully afraid to speak the truth.

Which is it JHK?

Same with Sam Harris who documents the myriad problems associated with organized religion, but supports the Israeli apartheid position on the Palestinian issue. Why are smart people getting it so wrong?

I agree that we need to rid the world of religion and religious based fanaticism and that Islamofascism is a present recognized danger that must be eradicated…but we also need to investigate who instigates world instability and what their true agenda is. And intelligent people with credibility and a soapbox are severely dropping the ball.

By the way, no doubt in my mind that Russian GRU holds what they called “results of objective surveillance” as to who did 911, as they do in MH17 case.

On 9/11/2001 Russia held the Nuclear Strategic Forces drill (announced beforehand according to normal protocols). When events in NY were reported to Putin, he tried for some time get Bush on a hotline and couldn’t.

I wouldn’t normally bother with stuff like this. But I will this time.

We have a poster that claims to have been in the service. If this poster was an obvious crap-mongering asswipe that would be one thing. But this commenter’s contributions have been intelligent and insightful and, to my knowledge, never trollish or abusive or disruptive.

But, no matter, somehow this claim of military service prompted a threat from another commenter to smoke out the poster’s identity.

This is just a suggestion, maybe take it easy on the threats. Why? Because they foul the air. And, as the threatener would acknowledge, this is an “anonymous” blog. And you therefore don’t know with any certainty who any of us are or who you are in fact threatening. Make sense? Besides, threats tend to get people banned. Not that I have any say. This, afterall, ain’t my blog.

Where are the satellite photos of Russian tank columns crossing the border? Or Russian infantry?

Putin is paying West back in its own currency – it’s called “Plausible deniability”

How the hell you tell “Russian” Russian from “Ukrainian” Russian? You can’t, can you. Or old Soviet-era T-72 tank that both side use – plenty of that shit lying around. Actually, according to what I know, most of the tanks and artillery units were illegally purchased from Ukrainian warehouses with bribes.

What if we really are that dumb? What if the purpose is to throw you into the arms of Putin and those like him? If it is, and it may well be, many are already in that loving embrace and they’re as dumb as a box of rocks — and that’s pretty god-damned dumb.

I think the object of the ZH derision was the poor, gen 1 resolution of the satellite photography. It’s difficult to take it seriously when we have Google Earth as a point of reference.

It’s also difficult to take it seriously in the context of Russian military convoys reported destroyed and then mysteriously not destroyed, or the collusion of the Ukrainians, US, Aussies, and Dutch not to release the tower tapes of MH17.

Now if you are suggesting that “they” want to elicit this exact response among some of the populace for unknown domestic political reasons, why that’s damn creative and opens up a hall of mirrors I, dumb as I am, have not considered.

Russia is huge market for tropical fruits – things like bananas, pine apples, etc. Russia used to import those through European middle-man companies, produced mostly in Latin America.

Now with the Russian ban on European agricultural products European middle-man companies are out of business. Guess who jumped on the bandwagon? But of course, the South American producers. When Obama asked China and Latin American countries to join the illegal (not approved by Security Council) sanctions, China simply did not respond. Latin America with all their passionate love (especially Argentina) for Western usurers, replied that according to “Free Trade” principles of Washington Consensus their producers could trade with whomever the hell they please.

“In 2008 the govt. of the US decided it was going to go public (and whole hog) with the financial shenanigans. That move was willful, blatant and hubris-laden craziness to those of us who had been watching the narrative unfold, instead of hoping everything would work out okay. …Well, the legerdemain and smoke and mirrors baffled the rubes with bullshit didn’t it? Like a charm.”-Oz.

What happened in 2008 took a while for me to process – longer than it took me to get over the Fall of the Wall… And I was over that the Winter before it officially happened (I’ve been operational that long).

Before Fall ’08 I knew for a fact that things were incredibly corrupt, but I had ‘faith’ in the survival instincts of politicians and bureaucrats, and I was ‘pretty sure’ that The Street would understand – that as painful as it might be – a comprehensive Purge was essential.

I thought that they understood that there was no long-term hope in *extending and pretending*. I __thought__ they were far wiser than they actually were, in other words.

The example that The Fed’, The Dept. of the Treasury and Wall Street’s mandarins sent the world was horrible. They broke every rule and standard that they had ever held the rest of the world to.

Recall for instance, how the IMF [*] absolutely __refused__ to cooperate with the Indonesian government’s plan to use QE or t refinance back in ’97 to get them out their financial hole? The Five ‘Asian Tigers’ [**] never forgot that.

And then, when the shoe was on the other foot…

So, needless to say, a lot of influence went up in smoke.

By November 2008 any credibility that the ‘Washington Consensus’ [***] had with the rest of the developed world for financial integrity and acumen was in the toilet. It was blatantly obvious that the past 40 years had been nothing more than con-artistry.

So, no surprise that de-dollarization got underway for real in 2009, not long after ARRA rolled out.

A few financial oligarchs dealt the American Empire a death-blow with a few crucial decisions.

At this point it seems __Utterly Bizarre__ to me that there are still people who believe ‘controlling the message’ and ‘perception management’ will get things back to ‘normal’ (ie., pre-2007).

They’re the ‘Baghdad Bobs’ of the new era.

— — —

[*] Whose leadership comes from The Street, et al.

[**] As they were known back then. Not so much after the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997.

[***] The interlocking memberships of The Federal Reserve, The Department of the Treasury and the Cabinet Level players in the White House.

Not to worry. Secretary Hagel has announced that in 2014 150 transgendered individuals have enlisted so far into the US Armed Services. One of Secretary Hagel’s priorities has been to render the Army and Marine Corps ‘gender neutral’, so as to make it more fair, and give everybody a chance, regardless of sexual predilictions. Steps have been taken inside the military to make these people feel welcome and part of the team, for example, they themselves make the decision as to what restroom to use. Sure some of the soldiers have grumled about it, but too bad for them. they either get with the program or get out.

O ya, fincain, looking at video and photos of Russian infantry and armor moving around inside Ukraine, look to be tough wily peasant soldiers who could live on treebark and piss. they don’t seem to be the kind of chaps (and this goes for ISIS militia too) who are too overly concerned with sensitive issues of trangender rights and gender identity. Matter of fact, if the enemy has his Freak Flag flying thse trained killers might be driven to greater heights of brutality and mayhem. Better keep these new model trangender brigades in the rear for their own safety, no pun intended.

I have to admit, it’s the nuttiest thing I’ve seen to date. Everything that’s going down in the World today, and the priority is to ensure the military is fair to, and inclusive of, the LGBT community (whatever such a “community” means).

I’ve satirized about America being hollowed out by Communists at my blog, but I’ll be damned if the satire isn’t a little too close to reality.

I’m not sure if you’ve seen this or not, Marlin Williams, but it’s a pertinent example. If this isn’t blatant propaganda, nothing is. It just goes to show, anything, and I mean anything, can be inculcated, usurped, transformed, militarized and exploited a thousand different ways to serve whatever purposes you intend for it to serve.

It is clear the militia has achieved a major success in intercepting Kiev’s military operation, which represents a grave danger to the population of Donbass and which has already led to the loss of many lives among peaceful residents.

As a result of the militia’s actions, a large number of Ukrainian service members who did not participate in the military operation of their own volition but while following orders have been surrounded.

I call on the militia groups to open a humanitarian corridor for Ukrainian service members who have been surrounded, so as to avoid any needless loss of life, giving them the opportunity to leave the combat area unimpeded and reunite with their families, to return them to their mothers, wives and children, and to quickly provide medical assistance to those who were injured in the course of the military operation.

For its part, the Russian side is ready and willing to provide humanitarian aid to the people of Donbass, who have been affected by this humanitarian catastrophe.

I once again call on the Ukrainian authorities to immediately stop military actions, cease fire, sit down at the negotiating table with Donbass representatives and resolve all the accumulated problems exclusively via peaceful means.

Fast forward several years and pull the same speech from the shelf and dust it off.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin addressed Polorossiya militia.

It is clear the militia has achieved a major success in intercepting Warsaw’s military operation, which represents a grave danger to the populations of Upper Silesia and Kashubia and which has already led to the loss of many lives among peaceful residents.

As a result of the militia’s actions, a large number of Polish service members who did not participate in the military operation of their own volition but while following orders have been surrounded.

I call on the militia groups to open a humanitarian corridor for Polish service members who have been surrounded, so as to avoid any needless loss of life, giving them the opportunity to leave the combat area unimpeded and reunite with their families, to return them to their mothers, wives and children, and to quickly provide medical assistance to those who were injured in the course of the military operation.

For its part, the Russian side is ready and willing to provide humanitarian aid to the people of Upper Silesia and Kashubia, who have been affected by this humanitarian catastrophe.

I once again call on the Polish authorities to immediately stop military actions, cease fire, sit down at the negotiating table with Upper Silesian and Kashubian representatives and resolve all the accumulated problems exclusively via peaceful means.

Yes. the British Empire did not conquer India, the British East India Company did. No connection whatsoever.

I argue with American Patriots all the time. They think if they just get rid of Big Government, the evil will be destroyed. But the System is both Public and Private – and these guys jump from one to another all the time. The Patriots can’t see this since all Capitalism is “good” in their mind.

Did you see that the ISIS kidnappers waterboarded Foley, and probably most/all of their captives?

I wonder if they are more liberal with this “non-torture” (tm Bush the Lesser and his band) against American captives?

And thus do we begin to see that violating the Geneva Convention after 9/11 probably wasn’t the best idea, ever.

And I know Bush etal said it wasn’t really torture. Bull!
And they said all our Special Forces operatives and CIA types were subjected to waterboarding as part of their training – with the implication being that waterboarding really wasn’t that bad.

Again, BULLSHIT!
No matter how realistic the training – you know on some level that those doing the training really not trying to deliberately kill you; at least not on purpose.

It’s probably quite a bit different when they tie you down to a board in front of a group of genuine hostiles – all of whom would just as soon kill you by drowning as by some more common method.

======================

And why is it that Pres. Obama, capable of the most outrageous lies as a matter of course – states that, “On ISIS, we really don’t have a strategy.” Gives you insight into his thinking, huh?

Between the (stupid and shortsighted) hammer of Bush, Cheeny, and the Neocons – and the (ideologically driven) anvil of Obama and his group of panderers – – – the United States is being destroyed.

OK – end of rant. I’ve been out all week and had a need to lash out.
More later. Maybe.

Jim, you are an American treasure. I’ve been following your writings for several years. Technically your prose is a delight to behold. Thematically you balance the cold, hard truth with a natural warmth and humanity notably missing among other writers working the same general territory.

I’m writing to share with you an answer I recently posted to a question in the Quora forum, “Why is money scarce for most people?” Part of my answer derives from your writings about peak oil. Am I on the right track?

Thanks again for being so generous with your time. I’m sure you expose yourself to a whole can of crazy every week, but this Midwestern boy from Lake Wobegon appreciates your work.

Below is my post, if you’re interested. I was responding to a fellow named Erik Fair who basically said people don’t work enough to make money, standard Ayn Rand-type stuff.

Money represents energy, plain and simple, and is the lifeblood of an economy.

Technology might be called the organ system of the economic body, directing energy toward economic growth.

Your income is based on how much energy you expend and direct, based on whether you are part of what might be called the brains, muscles, filters, fatty tissues, connective tissues, limbs, etc. of the body economic.

When bankers choke off the money supply, they strangle the economy. When they misdirect money, certain economic organs grow cancerous at the expense of the others.

Money is scarce for two reasons:
1. The people who create it misdirect it.
2. Most people have lost the proper balance of physical, mental, and social energy.

Money has traditionally been related to mining/minerals as it was literally made of precious metals i.e. gold, silver, etc. As the collective energy of society grew, more precious metals were mined and the money supply grew accordingly. Before the age of fossil fuels, most work was accomplished through wind (sails), water, humans (slaves), or animals. All of this created natural limitations on economic growth and a natural sense of balance in the workers and overall society.

Our current financial paradigm is based on the petrodollar and the assumption that oil supplies are practically unlimited . We are living essentially on the oil standard rather than the gold standard.

The majority of everything around you was made with oil and brought to you by oil. 80 MILLION barrels of oil are produced per day. The percentage of human calories expended to create your world is comparatively very small. Your average oil usage in calories is equivalent to having approximately 40 human slaves at your beck and call.

What does this mean in practical terms? It means that we really have to be thoughtful about the mental, social, and physical technologies that direct energy and our place in the economic “body” if we want more money.

Here’s an example of how being more thoughtful about energy will lead to more money: In college I was a mover. Backbreaking job. I felt my boss was ripping me off because he sat in an office while I did all the work and earned a pittance. Then I thought, who/what is really doing the most work? The answer was that truck my boss owned was doing far and away the most “work,” running on oil. I started thinking about what it means to take the risks of starting a business, building a reputation, and owning that truck. I then started thinking about the the mechanic who fixed that truck, the men and women who built the roads that carried the truck, the workers who drilled the oil for the truck, all the way through the doctors who fixed the workers, and so on.

It’s a complex network of mental, physical and social energies, and I have focused on all three as I have progressed in my career. I respect all working people because they serve vital functions in the economy. I feel we have cancers choking off our economy right now and killing the genuine workers and thinkers. I believe that just as previous generations were limited by the gold standard, we are limited by the oil standard and that we haven’t even begun to tap our mental and social energies.

I personally want just enough money to raise my family and enjoy/employ technology; however I have no interest in unlimited money because I believe it is being misdirected and built on unnatural assumptions.

Basically we live in a world of energy, mental, physical, and social. Balance each and the money will take care of itself.

“Bottom line: Russia has not invaded Ukraine. The propagandists in the media are just trying to hide the fact that the Novorussia Army Forces (NAF; aka-the pro Russia separatists) are kicking ass and taking names. That’s what’s really going on. That’s why Obama and his gaggle of miscreant neocons are in a furor. It’s because they don’t know what to do next, so they’ve returned to their default position on every issue; lie like hell until they settle on a plan.”-MW.

Paul Craig’s points (3) about why the invasion ‘news’ is bollocks are worth looking at as well:

“A third reason is that the Russian military does not need to send troops into Ukraine in order to stop the bombing and artillery shelling of the Russian populations by Washington’s puppet government in Kiev. The Russian air force can easily and quickly destroy the Ukrainian air force and artillery and, thereby, stop the Ukrainian attack on the secessionist provinces.”-PCR.

During the first six months of 2014, almost 31% of German electric power came from renewable sources, mainly wind, biogas, and solar; this was more than came from brown coal. Germany has been called “the world’s first major renewable energy economy”

Yes, and on one windy, cloudless day in the past year I think the amount generated soared to around 70% of total.

This is wonderful until you as a grid operator have to integrate this with your power system. Then, not so much.

The Germans are in the process of revamping their Energiewende legislation that — no surprise here– will likely impact the small-scale operators previously encouraged via financial supports and effectively restrict the future to larger operators with sufficient capital resources.
They are also, owing to the meddling of the USA in the European gas calculus (Ukraine), at least looking at their fracking resources. Wonderful as renewables may be, system stability still requires a fossil-fired prime mover. The Germans have not de-industrialized and are still exporting high value-added, energy-intensive manufactures. Natural gas has half the CO2 per btu as coal, and world-wide for the foreseeable future the movement to this form of energy production will be the other side of the renewable equation at the grid level.

Even with transmission losses central station power remains the only reliable way to power things like automobile plants or cities in the manner to which we have become accustomed. I could add the additional caveat of embedded fossil energy in things like solar panels or windmills but I suspect you know this already. Until renewable “escape velocity” is achieved, and indeed MIT and other institutions are constantly recording milestones even as incremental as 7W Seebeck effect modules, the world of convenience runs on oil.

After reading Jim’s “Long Emergency” a few years ago, I have began to realize the current strain of the Ebola virus is in the process of going international and becoming a global pandemic. In his book, Jim pointed out that where were plenty of dangerous “bugs” in the deep dark places ready to come out and start raising havoc with the human race especially in the face of restricted energy and financial resources.

The media assures everyone in the USA they have nothing to fear that the virus cannot possibly spread in a “modern industrialized” societies like ours. I seriously doubt what the news media are saying since they also assure us we have thousands of years of fossil fuels left, too.

It will be interesting to see how this latest most deadly strain propagates and how soon cases start showing up in the US, disrupting travel, business, food production and other critical parts of the “economy”. It could be a downer year, for sure and just in time for the Christmas shopping season.

The other elephant in the room is the spread of radical Islam which in fact is just undiluted Islam, the full strength Islam that intends to come out and wipe all infidels (i.e. non-Muslims) from the earth. To me, the first two World Wars, as bad as they were, stand pale in front of what we are facing today. Throw in the peak oil, peak water and peak finance and it really gets wild.

The internet is straining from a recent barrage of spam and round the clock hacking and I have to wonder how much longer it will be until we are back to standing in lines, writing checks, using snail mail and conducting business on land-line phones?

“After reading Jim’s “Long Emergency” a few years ago, I have began to realize the current strain of the Ebola virus is in the process of going international and becoming a global pandemic. In his book, Jim pointed out that where were plenty of dangerous “bugs” in the deep dark places ready to come out and start raising havoc with the human race especially in the face of restricted energy and financial resources.”-Goat.

I’m also interested in tracking the expansion of the Ebola epidemic. It’s far from containment. It is – in point of fact – picking up speed. It is also interesting how many healthcare people are catching and getting killed by it:

And of course it is mutating as it spreads, making itself harder to detect and kill.

Regarding this:

“The other elephant in the room is the spread of radical Islam which in fact is just undiluted Islam, the full strength Islam that intends to come out and wipe all infidels (i.e. non-Muslims) from the earth.”-Goat.

It doesn’t seem to have started that way. Take for instance, this document (supposedly signed by The Prophet’ himself):

This is the famous “Achtiname” cited by moderate Muslims. It requires that followers of Islam, to __protect__ Christians and all ‘People of the Book’ (including Jews) and to __not interfere__ with their religious practices.

How things deteriorated from *that* to where we are now, I’m not longer interested in guessing about…

Like every other religious doctrine, manipulated by religious leaders or imams or “teachers” hungry for power. The major conflicts everywhere have one thing in common:

The right to exist.
The nra wants to continue to have guns in every hand exist.
The alternative lifestylists want to be guaranteed existance in the public realm.
The radical islamists who have been religated to the most unsustainable and inhospitable places on earth, must be allowed to fight to continue existing as a “nation”.
Finally, the leaders in this existentialist crisis, israel and palestine.
Lets not forget all the latest raptures in technology that will never exist outside the mass production of petroleum.

Jews and Christians are still dhimmis and have to pay the jiyza tax. Also they cannot preach in public, try to make converts, build new Temples or Churches, etc. The interference is pretty severe.
The later suras take precedence over the earlier more lenient sounding ones.

Muslims acknowledge earlier revelations but at the same time believe the Jews and Christians have perverted these. If they hadn’t, the would believe the exact same things as Muslims and would in fact BE Muslims. Everyone is born a Muslim and the religions and cultures just pervert that. In other words, Islam sounds a lot more at first glance or hear than it really is. And they play on that of course.

There’s this idea – held by certain people – that Russia, China and the rest of the BRICS-bloc *want* to operate within a ‘world financial system’ overseen by the NSA.

Uh, not exactly… Actually NO, they do not. That’s what the past six years of de-dollarization by Russia and China, as well as all their political maneuvering and consolidation has been about: Getting out of it.

We should remember that the virus is “loose” in Lagos, a city of around 15 million. I can’t seem to find any up-to-date news on the arrest or progression of the disease in this near-perfect breeding ground. News blackout? An “alarmist” article projected a mortality count of 20,000 in the city. I happen to think that a low-ball figure in the extreme!

Although you are suspicious of Orlov’s motives, consider this phenomena of the 5th stage of collapse (social). The stages need not be strictly linear; parts of one or the other can occur concurrently:

“… people with a lobotomized prefrontal cortex go on to function more or less normally (but do sometimes exhibit a startling lack of ethical or moral sense). But a lobotomy is by no means necessary to produce individuals with stunted morals and ethics: there is a critical learning period for developing a conception of the common good, the ability to cooperate with others in absence of selfish motivations, and a morality not directly grounded in biological self-interest. A social environment such as that which has prevailed in Ukraine during its period of “independence,” during which theft and prostitution were prized above all, is not conducive to developing any of these. A case can be made that such an environment exerts the opposite evolutionary pressure: if all desirable women are prostitutes and the only economic opportunities involve theft, then biological survival requires theft. This makes a large prefrontal cortex redundant, and those who have a smaller one perhaps make more efficient criminals. The result is a population dominated by people free of any human values, who pursue strictly biological goals of resource accumulation and reproduction.”

Would you think a little lying about a [strangely limited] Russian invasion and calling down munitions on your neighbors for less than the price of a cheap cellphone to be “out of the question”?
See the whole article. Personally, I believe he’s got a good point about the nurture (or lack thereof) of a generation or two. …Or do we learn nothing from observing the habits of those who raise us?

Are lying, cheating, stealing and pointedly applied violence the habituations of the current crop of Ukrainian satraps? How about their handlers/helpers (however labeled) birthed in the good ol’ USofA?

BTW, I also happen to see this country (lead by liars, cheaters and thieves) headed down a road with the exact same signposts. The destination at its’ end will not be a happy place, as those here who have been carefully watching the passing scenery (especially including our esteemed host) have noted.

That is not exactly the truth and, if you read Russian Internet, you must know it (by the way, Russian Internet is sooooo much more exciting these days than anything you find in US).

Putin build up a systemic (that guy is VERY systemic, everything he does is so calculated by several competing analysts) approach to help Novorossiya uprising, But everything he does is pretty much in the boundaries of what US does in, say, Syria. He carefully avoids any direct, provable involvement by formal Russian military – so all accusations of Russian troops fighting there are laughable and western professionals know that.

There is, definitely, financial, logistical support and sharing of the intelligence. Most, if not all, military equipment comes from Ukrainian army warehouses – but you need plenty of cash and connections. I am sure there are training camps in Rostov Region (Russia) for young recruits-volunteers. Also, experienced Russian Generals are involved (remotely, telecommuting) in planning and directing military operations and building a professional army.

Let me put it this way – if Putin lets Ukrainians defeat Novorossiya, he probably would be out of Kremlin in less than a year. Putin is Russian Tzar, not a P-resident, and Russian Tzar true support base were always Russian people, not Russian oligarchs

FITM,
Thanks for the clarification and further comment.
(I would still recommend the other essay as well, because it speaks to motive. What drives people to do what they do is important… to me anyway.)

– Is Key. He’s not an abject servant of his regional oligarchy. This gives him a lot more room for maneuver than say, any POTUS in the past 25 years.

His people can actually make and execute a plan, without having it cut to pieces by scope-creep.

Just to be clear: Putin is not my ‘hero’. This has nothing to do with liking or disliking him, his cabinet and his close associates. I’m only interested in getting a clear view of what is happening; who’s got what, and who, and how much, etc.

By the way, all Ukrainian military commanders know that they are breaking their Constitutional Oath by raising arms against their own people. I am sure there will be consequences, especially for those officers who gave orders to carpet-shell cities with multiple rocket launchers.

Russian military attorneys are busy collecting evidence of such war-crimes.

Would be no surprise if all that madness in Ukraine end much sooner than later.

On the flip side, O3, I can agree with you also.
“….there is a critical learning period for developing a conception of the common good, the ability to cooperate with others in absence of selfish motivations, and a morality not directly grounded in biological self-interest.”

True enough, ozone. But who or what controls what happens to young people during that critical learning period?

There has to be a completely new culture. As of now, very conservative parents will send their kids to Christian schools – and still let them use the computer without supervision, with predictable results. If White culture is to survive, we must become like a non-pacifist version of the Amish.

Many of you have expressed interest in what the Archdruid, JMG, has to say about things. IMO, he has a fine logical mind and a fascinating view of a collapsing future. Like all people, though, he has areas where he is totally wrong.

Again IMO which should go without saying, one area where he draws wrong conclusions concerns black/white relations as regards law enforcement in the United States. He made this statement in his missive last week, “Meanwhile, closer to home, what has become a routine event in today’s America—the casual killing of an unarmed African-American man by the police….” and then doubled and tripled down on his prejudices in responses to commenters. http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2014/08/heading-toward-sidewalk.html

The man is entitled to his opinions, and he backs them up with forceful logic. But that doesn’t mean he’s correct. And a statement like the above certainly means he’s not unprejudiced enough to fairly serve on a jury – which seems a reasonable criteria for fairness.

——————————

Oddly, and speaking of fairness, several commenters to JMG’s piece last week expressed a strong opinion to the effect, “I no longer read James Howard Kunstler because he’s a racist/homophobe/whatever.”

Which is an amazing sentiment. To completely ignore a talented author and thinker because he exhibits disagreeable views.
I wouldn’t do that, if I had a logical mind.

BTW, if you’re bored on a Sunday – JMG has a hell of a blog archive and a generally coherent, if chilling, world view.

What are you blind about? Well for one thing, you would do to the unborn what you wouldn’t do to a rabid dog. Not that you would do it, but you allow it. If you had to go in with a hook and tear off an arm, a leg, a head, you actually might stop. I have faith in you.

Greer banned me for expressing my love of my land and my people. Liberalism just wont allow this. We are always supposed to be for the world and all people, all people except our own evidently. But often in their private lives, “social justice warriors” are the most grasping and vicious hypocrites imaginable.

I think Janos nailed it a week or so ago: along with the widely-read logical mind and beautiful prose beats a liberal heart. As intelligent as he is this bias trumps reality. You would think someone who reads everything would read the FBI crime statistics, if not Colin Flaherty.

“The Ukrainian military is struggling because it’s being helped by The West” – Cold ‘em and Hold ‘em, paraphrased –

Cold – you have a fascinating, if very mainstream inspired, view of this situation. It might help us if you would translate US/EU interventions on the Russian border into dollars and cents terms. I will ABSOLUTELY GUARANTEE YOU that our national “leadership” translates everything into dollar $$ terms.

So – what are the likely financial consequences to the average USian for Russian success?

That’d make a great reality TV show—Pay”heaps” (an Australian expression) of cash to misanthropes like JHK or Dmitry Orlov to live in Hollywood for 6 months and record their lives on TV. Make ‘em drive around in huge 1970s vintage Cadillacs or Lincoln Continentals.

Packs of feral, wild dogs, running in packs, eating dead ebola victims lying in the streets, but also furiously digging up infected corpses from shallow graves and eating them too. snarling and yelping, tearing into rotted human flesh and swallowing big chunks … in Liberia, creation of the United States in the back to Africa movement in the 19th century.

“And why is it that Pres. Obama, capable of the most outrageous lies as a matter of course – states that, “On ISIS, we really don’t have a strategy.” Gives you insight into his thinking, huh?” — Progress4What

If you are going to put quotation marks around what President Obama said, please quote him correctly. You left off an important word. What Obama said was: “we don’t have a strategy yet”

I think Obama should be congratulated for this statement… because it reflects reality. It is not like Obama, or the Pentagon, forgot to develop a strategy. It is not that Obama neglected to come up with a plan for victory. Obama is simply reflecting the reality of the situation, that no such strategy for victory even exists.

Given the complexity of the Iraq/Syrian/ISIS situation, you half to admire Obama’s prudence. It is refreshing that Obama is not being suckered into a new war that ends up costing thousands of American soldiers lives, trillions of dollars, and only ends up making things worse. In other words, thank God Bush/McCain/Romney are not in the White House.

If you believe in the Constitution, it is not the President who wages war. Only Congress has the authority to declare war. To follow the Constitution Obama should demand a debate and a congressional vote before doing anything that commits us to another big war.

Hasn’t American Constitution been superseded by Patriot Act and is of no real consequence no more? Hasn’t the Congress become a playground for various commercial interests? Hasn’t the President of the United States become a blackmailable subject of intelligence arms of powerful oligarchical groups?

The Patriot Act did not change the Constitution with reference to the authority for declaring war resting with Congress, not the President. Congress has to vote a declaration of war and provide funding… but that is not going to happen… and that means Obama has no authority to wage war.

It seems that we are standing on the brink of an apocalypse. Russia already threatened that they have more nuclear arms that all EU countries together, which means they could easily wipe them out before any real conflict would have started. Instability is emblematic in the whole world, only China stands firmly, while being constantly bullied as a “potential” thread to “our” interests. To me it seems that we have more in common than the other way around. Our industry, which heavily depends on oil from the Arabian peninsula and Venezuela, is also potentially endangered by the increases in oil prices after the production goes down. And what else? Maybe it is worth mentioning that even Hollywood is going through a lengthy crisis in which no one is willing to get overpriced tickets and see their latest blockbuster movies.

“If you are going to put quotation marks around what President Obama said, please quote him correctly. You left off an important word. What Obama said was: “we don’t have a strategy yet””
– pkrugman*-

You are correct, I should have denoted the quote as a paraphrase.

Maybe the “yet” is important, maybe not. The whole phrase does give some insight into Pres. Obama’s mindset, though. This is a man who is a consummate politician in many areas – which means he lies without even having to think about it. And – when he’s on his game in an area of politics that he understands/enjoys/whatever – his lies are close enough to the truth that his sycophants immediately come to his rescue when the lie is exposed.

Consider the Obamaism, “If you like your healthcare plan you can keep your healthcare plan.” Or, “If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor.” (both statements paraphrased from memory, btw)

Both statements were complete lies from the beginning – but when they under discussion, the sycophants were quick to say that what he REALLY meant to say was – – – well, pkrugman*, being a Obama sycophant why don’t YOU tell us.

Anyway – as regards ISIS, Pres. Obama didn’t have a defensible lie ready regarding strategy – at the time of that fateful press conference. WHAT THE HELL? He’s a politician. He is supposed to ALWAYS have a bucketful of defensible lies to draw on.

The fact that he didn’t have a lie ready tells us:

1. He (pres. Obama) doesn’t care about ISIS, doesn’t care about the Middle East, and really doesn’t care for international politics.

2. He is in over his head and ready for his term to end.

3. He will concentrate on his “base,” and big Democratic Donors* for the rest of his term. These are the people who make him feel good about his place in history – even though he and BushII may have combined to change history irreversibly for the worse.

*And regarding those Democratic Donors, two images keep flitting into my mind. One image is Nero and his court fiddling away while Rome burned. The other image is that of the wealthy and well connected on the Titanic at some point during the sinking. And I’m not sure what point at the sinking we’re at, yet. But all the lifeboats are in the water, IMO.

“As intelligent as he is this bias trumps reality. You would think someone who reads everything would read the FBI crime statistics, if not Colin Flaherty…” – florida power, regarding JMG –

Very nice analysis, FP. All of us have biases, great writers just expose theirs to public scrutiny. So it is with Kunstler as regards Israel. His mind is made up. He has posters who agree with him and take it several more steps forward – to the point that ANY criticism of Israeli policy earns from them a label of anti-semitism.

After a time you learn that it is generally profitless to challenge people on their publicly expressed biases. Even if you prove them wrong and they know they are wrong – they are not going to back down because they have so much invested in a particular bias.

He “banned” you from further exhortations toward white supremacy on his webspace – or something relatively similar to that.

Neither of us is banned from the website, IOW, I post there occasionally ’till yet. Rather, we are banned from discussion of those two specific topics, especially when these topics don’t fit into JMG’s topic for the week. I’ll guarantee you that your screenname still works over @ ADR. If you remember what it was you should try it out again on a more nuanced exploration of a relevant topic. He’s gonna’ look at migration next week, btw. Should be interesting.

Hey Prog, Obummer is a waste of O2, this country has the shits, and we are slowly dyeing from dehydration, lack of oil, water, and overpopulation. 50,000,000 on snap, disability, Medicaid, etc. etc, I’ve seen it in the trenches, The center can’t hold. The middle class will collapse under the weight of the bottom feeders. I did my 33 years of public service and I am sick of the tatted, overweight, lounge lizards feeding from the federal trough. Time for an ale!

We’re done. Obama is going to approve all those illegals as well. With that issue off the table – the Chamber of Commerce and the country club wing of the Repub party can then increase LEGAL immigration next term.

I can see the future. It is unsustainable.
I have achieved enlightenment – now to tend the garden.

St. Elmo, you speak above the inconsequential arguments and move on to the current state of America without wasted nostalgia. I did 23 years of public service and got sick of seeing east Asian and Indian kids outwork, outperform, and out-character kids born and raised in the USA. In my last years, even if a native born American showed potential, it was all undone by the poor job done by his Boomer parents. I’m talking about the upper stratum of American kids not the flotsam and jetsam. They’re obese kids with no social skills who’ve been babysat by “Grand Theft Auto”.

People can flail away all they want about ISIS or Russia vs. Ukraine, or Israel vs. Hamas but these are mere diversions away from the FACT that without a shot being fired more and more important, intellectual, high-paying jobs are being taken over by foreigners because Americans have LOST IT. We’ve built a huge, highly-staffed Nanny State for our white, black, and Hispanic failures who want lifetime SSDI for depression.

I’ve personally known, alas, several people in California’s Central Valley (what a cesspit) who reach for welfare and SSDI as a FIRST resort because their sense of entitlement is so enormous that they wouldn’t deign to take a service sector job unless it paid 100% more than state assistance.

This country is dying FROM THE INSIDE. It’s not China’s fault. It’s not Russia’s fault. It’s not the President’s fault. In a sense, it’s not even the fault of corrupt CEOs or bankers. It’s a complete and utter failure of character of the average citizen. That 50M worth of people is only the tip of a sordid iceberg.

“What are you blind about? Well for one thing, you would do to the unborn what you wouldn’t do to a rabid dog. Not that you would do it, but you allow it. If you had to go in with a hook and tear off an arm, a leg, a head, you actually might stop. I have faith in you.”
– janos –

It is unfortunate that most of the Rabid Right have nailed their flag to the mast over abortion. (Especially after losing the gay marriage thing to judicial actions this summer. What is UP with that, btw??)

But on a grossly overcrowded planet, where women are subject to rape and fetuses are subject to genetic defects – all of this Rightwing stridency on abortion is costing them, bigtime!

Personally, I would do first trimester abortions for human mothers all day long, after making sure that there was no good future for the fetus; one way or another. And I actually know a lot about abortions and euthanasia, or have you forgotten?

Not human, I don’t have the skillset/training for that. But I did work as a veterinary technician for a while. If a (human) client presents a (canine/feline) patient for a spay procedure – and the patient is already pregnant – then the spay is an abortion as well as a total hysterectomy. And early in the pregnancy (first trimester) of any mammal, it’s just tissue, man. After the first trimester is where the big moral dilemma should be addressed.

I have put way more than my share of little puppies and kittens into the OR bucket for disposal. The worst I ever did was a litter of 5 pups that were about two weeks from delivery. Little guys were wriggling around inside their individual amniotic sacs and inside the bitch’s uterus. It was disturbing to all involved. So yeah – late term abortions are a very bad thing, which should only be considered if the life of the mother is in genuine danger or the fetus(es) are suddenly discovered to be egregiously defective.

But to muddy the water over IUD’s, and Plan B contraception and all of that – like Hobby Lobby and the SCOTUS did.

So Christians who own businesses should be forced to fund things that go against their religious beliefs? So much for the Constitution.

Yes the aborting of life is a sad affair. I had such an abortion done on my cat and I feel bad about it. But human life is different. That’s where your training and mentality lead you astray. Many women suffer from post-abortion syndrome. Some will suffer from it the rest of their lives, especially around the date when they did it or when their baby was supposed to be born. The psychiatric establishment refuses to even recognize this “disorder” – as if conscience is a disease.

On the other hand, look at how many Black babies are aborted. Consider how much worse America would be if they had been born. So I’m conflicted I admit. But this is so horrible I don’t wish it even on our enemies.

Inaction does not equal not caring. Acting precipitously could cause harm to the United States. Inaction means the president of the United States cares more about the United States.

Too frequently the United States has acted in a knee-jerk fashion with disastrous results or outright failure. There often is no military solution. Refusal to use the military also does not equal not caring.

We thought we needed to take out the Mujahideen and after a decade of US military action the Taliban is stronger than ever and we created Al Qaeda.

We thought Sadaam Hussein needed to be taken out and we created ISIS.

You claim that Obama is “in over his head.” If you do not know what you are doing, , then inaction is the best course. Obama is smart enough to know that.

1. Putin and Poroshenko agreed that Ukrainian conflict must be resolved trough talks, not violence.
2. Putin said that the root of all evil in Ukraine is unconstitutional military coup in Kiev
3. The conflict could not be resolved without representatives of SE Ukraine
4. Russia will be sending second humanitarian convoy o SE Ukraine, but according to wishes of Ukrainian President Poroshenko it will go by train through Kiev
5. The talks with Ukrainian officials are tentatively scheduled for September 1, possibly in Minsk (capital of Belorussia). The “forces of self defense of SE Ukraine” will be represented by Vice President of Donetsk People Republic Andrei Purgin.

Obama publicly stated he has no master plan. So, was Obama being honest or was he lying? Make up your mind, P4W*

We could go after ISIS and Sunnis. Iran and regional dictators would thank us. But why should American men and women die to help Iran, the Shiites, and Assad? We don’t have a dog in that fight. Bush dragged us in. We need to get out and stay out.

The Constitution says our government has a duty to defend the United States from imminent threats. Nothing happening in the world requires our military intervention because there is no imminent threat to our survival. Unless you have a very liberal use of “imminent threat.”

What I am saying is also what Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Dwight Eisenhower, and George Washington have all said: beware of foreign entanglements. They will weaken and destroy you from within. Big government will be spending our national budget on veterans’ benefits for decades because of Bush’s cowboy decision to rush into action.

O’ bomber is a eunuch with a golf club. Playing the day away as the world burns. He has not a plan and will ride into the sunset as soon as his 8 years are up. Giving speeches for thousands to his adoring fans. Just like William the 1st.

Obama publicly stated he has no master plan. So, was Obama being honest or was he lying? Make up your mind, P4W*”
– pkrugman* –

What exactly is your point here, pk*?

My point, which you have not addressed at all, was that Obama (and most/all politicians) can lie and dissemble as easily as they draw breath. But on the issue of ISIS, Obama didn’t have a lie ready for public presentation at a pre-announced news conference, not even a benign little “we’re working on it,” which would have deflected this issue to his benefit.

And this lack of preparation-for-lying clearly indicates that Obama:

1. Doesn’t care about ISIS, doesn’t care about the Middle East, and really doesn’t care for international politics.

2. Is tired of being Pres. and is ready for his term to end.

3. Will concentrate on his “base,” and big Democratic Donors for the rest of his term. These are the people who make him feel good about his place in history – tragic though it may prove to be.

You’re barking up the wrong tree, Finca. Even though several posters here think American politicians are habitual liars (as if no honest politicians exist, even in the White House) and even though CFN resembles an anti-American complaint fest, few are going to renounce their citizenship. Most CFNers are just exhibiting their hypocrisy.

“And how do you know that this is what being banned really means? I don’t post there anymore because my posts wont go through. That’s because I’ve been banned.” – janos, pondering ADR –

If you watch how JMG runs his blogger software, Janos, posts over there go into a que and are not immediately posted. JMG periodically opens up the que of new posts and approves them for posting one at the time. Those that he does not approve for posting disappear, and are never seen on his comment thread. That’s what happened to any posts of yours that didn’t go through.

JMG also (probably/apparently) does not have the ability to IP ban posters. Occasionally he will put a post through, and later denote that it was from a “sock puppet” of another poster.

As far as the difference in White Supremacy and “white survival,” if that’s how you put it – most people don’t get the difference. I do, and I also see that that difference will become more important as collapse proceeds. But remember I’ve tended my garden after achieving enlightenment.

I was at a county commission meeting when a member of the public asked, “Can you hold the next meeting after five o’ clock?”

It took the commission chair 7 endless freakin’ minutes to dissemble his answer to the question, which answer could have been paraphrased into one short 5 second sentence, “No, because we all have other responsibilities and don’t like to change our schedules either.”

The longer politicians are in office, and the higher up the chain they climb – the better they get at seamlessly lying/dissembling. Otherwise they don’t get win office or they don’t get reelected.
And when a politician (back to Obama) doesn’t have some fluent dissembling language available on an importing topic – it has to mean that his head’s not in the game, metaphorically speaking.

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Too Much Magic

Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation

The nationally best-selling author of "The Long Emergency" expands on his alarming argument that our oil-addicted, technology-dependent society is on the brink of collapse—that the long emergency has already begun. Published by the Atlantic Monthly Press.